About Terri New

"There's lotsa wonderful, fun things to do while we're tap dancing on this earth!"

Multimedia Production. Music composition and Performance. Narration and Voice-over Skills. Video Production. Developing Marketing Materials, Social Media Consultant, Computer Skills in many and varied software. Graphic and Web Design skills.  

Terri New, has a history of producing a unique blend of Arts & Activism, such as with Project Booklift, a nationwide project which airlifted 400,000 books to the new democracies of Eastern Europe.  Ms. New was awarded the Santa Barbara Woman of the Year for 1995 and the Soroptimist’s Woman of Distinction in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara in 1993.  In David Forward’s book “Heroes After Hours” in which she is featured, she is described as a woman “who makes things happen.” 

Creator/Producer of many national and international projects, she has been producing many different kind of artistic projects for 30 years.    Terri has been a singer-songwriter-recording artist for 30 years and her arranger/partner is Bob Esty who has produced the likes of Barbara Streisand, Bette Middler, Donna Summer, Cher, Julio Iglesias to name a few. As a playwright, in 1990 Terri wrote and produced with Bob, Voices of the Velvet Revolution at the Wilshire Ebel Theater.  They took the show to Europe with Poet James Ragan, a Pulitzer Prize nominee with Terri performing the songs of the show.  

In 1991 she created a documentary “Rebirth of a Nation,” and associate-produced this with KEYT, an ABC affiliate, which won the Golden Mike Award for best documentary.    She produced a project in India on Rotary International’s Group Study Exchange (GSE) and shot footage for the Rotary Polio Plus Campaign. 

As a Producer, Writer and Videographer, she specializes in creating multi-media applications. Terri also developed an educational-entertainment family curriculum project in a multi-media venue.  Terri also served as associate producer of an educational video series with The California Seafood Council (CSC), about "Fisher Folk" in collaboration with the California State School of Education.  She also composed and produced the musical score for the series.  Terri also produced many video and marketing projects on the Fishing Industry.

 Terri produced a CD-ROM highlighting the work of internationally renowned photographer Emil Muench.

 Among projects currently in production are several Vblog promotional projects for African Safari Companies, highlighting the safari experience.

She also worked on a series in Association with Rivverun Productions of NY, “Master Teachers of American Theater” shot in New York City and at the Yale campus in Connecticut with notables of the theater world as Earle Gister and Ming Cho Lee, illustrating their impact on several generations of American actors.  

Terri lives in beautiful Prescott, Arizona with her South African husband, Louis van Tonder, her horses, Sundance & Denali and two lively Jack Russell's, Shorty and Butah.   Woman of the Year - Santa Barbara 1995 Selected by the Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors - Woman's Commission Woman of Distinction, International Goodwill, 1993 Soroptimists, Santa Barbara, CA. Woman of Distinction, International Goodwill, 1993 Soroptimists, Los Angeles, CA


Heroes After Hours

Terri is featured in David Forward’s book “Heroes After Hours” in which, she is described as a woman “who makes things happen.”  Have a read!

Terri created/organized Project Booklift and worked with this non-profit organization. Successfully raised substantial corporate and private funds, Federal USIA Grants, In-Kind Procurements for the Project Booklift operations. This was an International effort which brought 400,000 books to the Czech and Slovak Republics to nurture the new democracies. The culmination of this International work resulted in two "Woman of Distinction" Awards (1993), both in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara and the “Woman of the Year” in Santa Barbara. Terri was one of the subjects in a book by David Forward entitled “Heroes After Hours”- Jossey-Bass Publishers (1994).

 

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Rich Media Projects

Multimedia literally means …many mediums. As a multimedia producer/ designer I have worked across many disciplines of design and media incorporated into integrated presentations using a variety of artistic communicative media and am always learning more.

It’s a complex blend of different forms of content, text, graphics, video, animations, and interactive content. Incite Productions has created exceptional rich media presentations in using proprietary software as in L3i’s –iCube as well as PowerPoint Presentations. Using these programs to their fullest, incorporating text, art, animation, and audio and video elements.

 What I love about multimedia is the rich experience of the senses, it captures attention. By the use of music/soundtracks, narrative that sets a tone, a mood, along with magery/video that fully details your subject. It takes complex ideas and presents them in a compelling and understandable way.

The creative possibilities are endless! That’s why I love the work!


Adventure Travel



Terri New

"On Travel"

“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” - Susan Sontag

I can say I have had the good fortune to travel much of this incredible world. From the European countries of France, England, Spain, Belgium, Czech Republic now known as 'Czechia', Slovakia, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Greece, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Vatican City to South and Central America, Mexico, Panama, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Venezuela and Argentina, Canada,  Morocco and Algiers,  And Islands!  Seychelles - Dennis Island and North Island, Hawaii, Haiti , St. Thomas, St. Kitts, Saint Lucia,  The Bahamas from the North and South of India to many African nations, from Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi , The plethora of the states of the union, excepting the Dakotas and the Carolinas...and lately to the northernmost town in the world, Svalbard and  the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia in South Pole... And You bet I took the polar plunge on both sides of the earth,  I wanted to experience the frigid waters and really feel I had touched that space in the world...

I  love adventure and can't wait till the next great exploration! I feel so very fortunate to lay witness to the incredible sights and experiences this world has to offer from scratching baby gray whales heads while their mama's kept close watch in the Baja to singing to elephants in the Botswana bush who were riveted by my tune...really!

WHY!? “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.”  

To give you an idea of my background I am a multimedia producer and have worked in the field of multimedia, public relations and marketing for many years in many parts of the world. I am also a performer, composer and have traveled in that capacity.  

As a filmmaker I try to open people's eyes to experiences, and try to lay the ground work to allay travel fear, and to  educate on issues that need confronted from wildlife poaching, to poverty, to other ways of being.

I love to highlight people who are making a difference.  I want people to love and respect this incredible planet and its inhabitants as much as I do.

 I also inherited from my Grandma Slama, that we are on this earth to make it a better place. So in my travels I strive to be not a tourist, but a world citizen.

As an example, I created and organized Project Booklift which after the fall of Communism was an International effort which brought books to the Czech and Slovak Republics to nurture the new democracies, bringing needed books for law reformation, for learning English and sciences, they desperately wanted to catch up with the western world. This grass roots movement championed by so many caring people, according to the Czech Foreign Minister Jiri Dientsbier "was the first sign the outside world cared." For me I had the added honors from this International work resulting in two "Woman of Distinction" Awards (1993), both in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara and the “Woman of the Year” in Santa Barbara. I was one of the subjects in a book by David Forward entitled Heroes After Hours - Jossey-Bass Publishers (1994).  

These experiences taught me valuable lessons on how individuals can impact this world...and significantly... And when we travel we become ambassadors of our nation.

Let's show the world we are a caring nation!

“When overseas you learn more about your own country, than you do the place you’re visiting.” – Clint Borgen

 In our travel businesses, AfricanSafarsi.travel, Photo-safaris.com and TheAdventureTravel.Company, my husband, Louis van Tonder and I concentrate on making connections with stellar operations, to put people in safe hands so their experiences elevate their lives and those they visit.

 I promise you, Louis and I can create the most amazing time you will have in your life and we love doing it! So what does it take to be a traveler, world citizen and not a tourist. Let's have the conversation!

Terri New - Incite Productions

Co-Owner: African Safaris and Travel / Adventure Travel Vacations / PhotoSafaris.com


Terri New

"Why Art?!"

 I learn to walk in other shoes through great writing, extending kindness, empathy, compassion...understanding.

Art is a daily cup of inspiration, a heartfelt motivation, a healing, an enlivening, a complicated problem solving discourse, a joy, an enlightenment, exploration of the furthest recesses of mind. Through our stories...as a family, as a community, we define our purpose...our world comes together through an understanding of each other, in our histories, our truths and confrontations with life.

I slip in to the eternal abyss when looking into the paintings of Da Vinci, of the plein air artists, and it leaves me awed, inspirited motivated, excited by life and calm...it help me make sense out this great cosmos we are part of.

Music has an emotional  language that touches me in ways that warps time,  delves into hidden mysteries, it performs the task of keeping me grounded and connects my own humanity and yours.

When I see a great performance I know I have been touched by something bigger than all of us. The resounding effect is hope and belief in something greater than myself and something that we perhaps can accomplish together, it sears my imagination, it provokes, incites me to want to do great things. 

Artists provide us all an inroad to what we all spirituality yearn for, a connection with something greater, emerging life with purpose, give us depth where we might not have it, that give us soul when we have lost our connection, that give us breadth and complexity and greatness. Through ART we evolve, we as a culture evolve...it all starts with an idea, who better has ideas...and ideas of greatness than artists?

As a child with 11 siblings, a schizophrenic mother and an alcoholic father, it was singing and plays that we created that gave us an anchor to a better world. Music has been my salvation, my healing, my source and as I grow older and take on other creative challenges it has enriched my joy and my life... by the doors it has opened, by the special people it has put me in contact with.

When I see a child singing one of my songs with her eyes to the heavens, I know I have done a good thing. I have helped open that door to possibilities, to hope, to that intimate world of creation...with God or whatever you deem to call, the instinctual being that propels us into some kind of glory in our life.

Glory is created through heroics deeds and to me, artists are heroic people, to feel, to unearth an expression that daily needs defined, to keep reaching into indefinable realms that come into the forefront of life, to expand, reach, teach... for all artists teach.  It is inherent in the activity, this living prayer of creation.  Meaning and sense and beauty and thought provocation, that is art to me.

 I cannot imagine a life, or who would want a life without art.  I believe we are propelled towards creating sense and beauty,...if it is nurtured in us, by our culture, if it finds expression in our early years, we never let it go.

Terri New - Artist, Composer, Writer, Vocalist