About us

Public Dreams Trust is an organization like no other.

Established in 1999 , the company specializes in the design and production of traditional and pyromusical fireworks. Public Dreams Trust also has a wide selection of Catherine Wheels and also big Maltese Irdieden.

Public Dreams Trust is without a doubt one of the leading pyrotechnic display company in New Zealand.  We produce more than 30 pyromusical fireworks displays a year, including the biggest Matariki celebration in New Zealand.

As the mainstay of the Public Dreams Trust, Te Rangi Huata is the creative energy behind public festivals such as Matariki, the Fiesta of Lights, Waitangi Day celebrations and the Fishhook Festival. A common thread of the festivals is that they are designed to bring people together to engage as a community in something larger than themselves.

Another key component of virtually anything Huata is involved in is fireworks. Get him started on the subject and for long minutes he will wax lyrical about the international traditions and meanings associated with fireworks in Europe, China, India, Malta and the United States. He likens them to looking at Christmas tree lights, a feeling of warmth; light banishing dark, and good triumphing over evil, an adventure in the celestial realm.

“They lift people’s spirits unconsciously and are also one of the few things publicly that brings together people in an uncommon experience,” he says. “If you observe people leaving a fireworks show, they’re happy and even though there’s a traffic jam ahead they don’t shout.”

His passion for festivals and fireworks was developed overseas. In 1973, at age 18, he went from being head prefect of Maori boarding school Te Aute College to India to join an international youth theatre project. In Asia he saw how cultural celebrations could form part of everyday life and how it was possible to fit as many as 150 festivals into a calendar year. Later he studied stage production at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. In the early 90’s he was living in North America promoting Kahurangi, New Zealand’s leading professional Maori dance company. His brother Tama runs the dance group. It was the experience of being a volunteer at a winter festival in Canada that awoke his abiding interest in fireworks and his return to live in Hawke’s Bay that enabled him to bring all these threads together.