One of the collaborations was with photographer David Cook, who teamed up with a local group of women who recycle and repair.
Their group “Repair Reflare” repurposed a broken tent, which sparked discussion on how we need to rethink our relationship to consumption and consumerism.
“Connected Communities was the name of the event, and it highlighted how interconnected a lot of our community-led initiatives are,” said co-organiser and Te Weu trustee Renee Raroa.
“It’s a bit meta. One of the projects looked at soil and the mycelium fungal network. But that was repeated right through to looking at waterway systems.
“The layers kept repeating, right through to that interconnection between people.”
Director of Toi Aria Professor Anna Brown said the exhibition was based on an energising concept.
“What happens when you collaborate with locals and bring in people who really want to offer something?
“We expect our kids to do that in school environments. Well, what happens when we bring adults together and say, ‘Let’s share our knowledge and share our expertise and see what comes from that’.”
While the exhibition was open to the public, the most important feature was bringing people together to think about a creative response to climate issues, Ms Brown said.
Over 100 people attended the exhibition, including Mayor Rehette Stoltz and East Coast MP Dana Kirkpatrick.
Ms Brown hoped that the district council and government representatives could see what was going on at a grassroots level, and how they could connect into that.
“Our hope is that there is enough energy and enthusiasm and mahi going on in the local area to shift thinking into new ways of responding to climate.”
Renee Raroa said, “There are all sorts of ways to communicate the work that needs to be done.
“I think we often default to listening to expertise or reading reports and communicating that way. But the event and the creations that came from that really showed that you’ve got to have multiple mediums and ways of communicating, so that everyone can connect with it”.
The local initiatives included:
■ Slash For Cash, a Tolaga Bay enterprise that repurposes woody debris into organic biochar fertiliser and smokeless charcoal briquettes.
■ Radice Soil Solutions, empowering local farmers to cultivate ecosystems towards a resilient future.
■ The Ngahere Network, a collective of growers who share information on seed stocks to build a database of the native plants available in the region.
■ The Exchange Cafe, which facilitates regional conversations about climate solutions.
■ Ūawa (Water Projects) a wāhine collective that focuses on wai/water.
■ The East Coast Exchange which holds a public record of environmental regeneration work to allow people to earn Action Points in exchange for funding.
■ The Tairāwhiti Bioeconomy Project which consolidates and disseminates knowledge on building a circular economy on the East Coast.
■ Tāiki E! Next Gen Escapes is Tairāwhiti’s first escape room powered by Taiki E! Next Gen, a group of local rangatahi entrepreneurs who have created an escape room game themed on climate change.
■ Tōtaranui Nama Ona, the legal entity responsible for the land block Totaranui A1D2B2B.
The final performance featured Tolaga Bay’s Lily Stender dressed as a crayfish and bringing a message from the ocean to the land.
It was a collaboration between wāhine from Ūawa, and visiting writer Ingrid Horrocks.
Ms Brown said the performance was “anger and funniness mixed together to say, ‘we need to change the way we think about our environment and what we do’.
“There’s a long history of conversations about how to rethink land use in Tairāwhiti, but (after the cyclone) it suddenly became urgent to think about it.
“We need to think about what local people want for their whenua, how they want it to be flourishing and not used in forestry.”
