This episode from the 11th season of the award-winning show sees presenters Te Ori Paki and Ria Hall and the team make over a unique marae: Rongomaraeroa-o-nga-hau e wha. The marae serves members of the NZ Army — aka Ngāti Tūmatauenga — and the Waiouru community. Capturing the role of taha Māori in the Defence Force, the makeover enlists 140 new Army recruits, locals, whānau, hapu, ex-military personnel from all over New Zealand, and Victoria Cross recipient Willie Apiata. This season saw Marae DIY shift from Māori Television to TV3.

For this 2015 Marae DIY episode, presenters Ria Hall, Te Ori Paki and company travel deep into Tūhoe territory to makeover the unique Maungapōhatu marae. The settlement was established by prophet Rua Kenana in 1907 beneath the sacred mountain of Maungapōhatu. The remote location means the Tamakaimoana people have had to embody the DIY of the show’s name. The team uncover relics of Kenana’s circular parliament, gather native bush seasoning for the hangi, and face mud and rain, horses wandering onto the marae, and getting concrete mixers up the steep maunga.

Marae DIY is a long-running Māori Television series that brings a tangata whenua twist to the home renovation reality format = "marae knock out their 10 year plans in just four days". This Qantas Award-winning episode heads to Manutuke Marae (south of Gisborne) in mid-winter of 2006, with series creator Nevak Rogers (aka Nevak Ilolahia) and presenter Te Ori Paki. Rogers has Rongowhakaata whakapapa, and is the cheerleader as her whānau rally to meet the mahi goals: from french doors for the kitchen to makeovers for the Nannies (including a moko by Derek Lardelli).

Long-running series Marae DIY brings a tangata whenua twist to the home renovation format. Series creator Nevak Ilolahia describes the bilingual production as "the programme which helps marae knock out their 10 year plans in just four days". The drama of the building mahi is mixed with humour, whānau-spirit, tikanga (protocol) and history, and even makeovers for the nannies. For Marae DIY's 11th season in 2015, it shifted from Māori Television to TV3. In 2007 the 'Manutuke Marae' episode won a Qantas Award for best reality show.

'No 8 wire' Kiwi ingenuity is defined by problem solving from few resources (No 8 wire is fencing wire that can be adapted to many uses, an ability that was particularly handy for isolated NZ settlers). Embodied in heroes from Richard Pearse to PJ, Kiwi ingenuity is a quality dear to our national sense of self. It has been memorably celebrated, and sometimes satirised, on screen.

Record label Flying Nun is synonymous with Kiwi indie music, and with autonomous DIY, bottom-of-the-world creativity. This collection celebrates the label's ethos as manifested in the music videos. Selected by label founder Roger Shepherd: "A general style may have loosely evolved ... but it was simply due to limited budgets and correspondingly unlimited imaginations."

Low-tech legend Chris Knox is an accomplished musician, cartoonist, critic, filmmaker, and jandal wearer. His particular genius takes flight in the DIY aesthetic of his music videos. “This is a unique and important collection of work perfectly illustrating what is possible with the barest of resources and a free-wheeling imagination”, Flying Nun founder, Roger Shepherd.

The third part of this NFU series on aviation in New Zealand jets off post-World War II, where wartime aircraft and crew provided a base for the National Airways Corporation (later Air New Zealand). The romance of travelling via flying boat made way for mass global air travel; and NZ tourism and airports rapidly became more sophisticated. Presenter Peter Clements looks at how the NZ environment spurred innovation (ski planes, top-dressing, heli deer hunting), and traces the lineage of contemporary garage aircraft makers to DIY first flyers like Richard Pearse.

Steve Ayson’s supernatural short puts a twist on ‘domestic violence’ as a DIY home renovator fits a set of second-hand french doors to his doer-upper. He discovers that light isn’t all they let in. French Doors won selection to Melbourne and Clermont Ferrand festivals and sold to UK’s Channel 4 and France’s Canal Plus. At Locarno in 2002, Ayson won a ‘Leopard of Tomorrow’ prize, in a year the festival spotlit down-under films. Ayson has gone on to build a global career as a commercials director (including local classics Ghost Chips, and Lotto’s Lucky Dog).

This reality show gave an eco-twist to the DIY renovation genre by providing homes with a green makeover. In this first episode the young family undergoing the green grilling from presenters Francesca Price and Tristan Glendinning are the Petelos, a household that guzzles gas and churns out trash. Patrick Petelo learns that if his example (taking the train a couple of days a week) was widely followed, NZ’s total carbon emissions would be reduced by 15%. Created by Carthew Neal, the WA$TED! format sold successfully overseas, including to Planet Green (US).