After an internship with Ākau, Matenga Te Kaha Ashby works as a junior designer for the studio. Photo / Jonny Davis
The young people of Kaikohe in the Far North are redesigning their town and discovering what is possible through creativity, writes Catherine Steel.
The road to Kaikohe sweeps its way past rolling farmland, land war sites. An hour's drive from Whangārei, Kaikohe is close, geographically, to the many surrounding affluent coastal and farming towns but far from them, in so many ways. To get here, you'll pass the Hundertwasser toilets in Kawakawa, the Moerewa meatworks and then, after the turnoff to Ngawha with its healings waters, you'll enter Kaikohe – the heart of Ngāpuhi, the largest iwi in Aotearoa.
Broadway, Kaikohe's main street, is sleepy and slow, with tired-looking buildings, empty sites and shops with little stock on the shelves. It is a town at the wrong end of all the statistics and sits highest in the deprivation index for the Far North. But there's another side to this town, one in which its people's pride and heart run strong.
Nowhere is this more evident than in a local design studio Ākau, which engages taitamariki (young people) in its community projects. You'll see its influence on Broadway, within an unprepossessing Mobil Ngāpuhi Service Station.
Ākau was founded by three women, Ana Heremaia and co-founders Ruby Watson and Felicity Brenchley. Ana is an interior architect who worked in London and Melbourne before choosing to return to Northland.
Ākau is a workshop and, inside, local taitamariki have worked their magic. A magnificent plywood kohekohe rākau (tree) stands majestically in the centre of the interior. Its branches stretch up across the ceiling and trailing lights symbolise its berries. Enter the tree and inside the design recounts the origins of Kaikohe and Ngāpuhi.
Neon yellow, turquoise and green tāniko and whakairo patterns (traditional artforms) and maunga (mountains) grace the surrounding walls. Even the toilets are reincarnations of native forests and birdlife, in green and yellow. The setting stops you in your tracks, putting in context this creative triumph against the odds this town has faced.
Symphony Morunga, 19, is one of two graphic designers who created the space. Her eyes sparkle as she speaks about her work. In 2019 as a year 13 student at Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Kaikohe (the local Māori immersion school), she participated in a workshop run by Ākau. They were seeking design ideas from taitamariki with which to revamp the service station. Symphony and her fellow students came up with the theme of maunga and the rākau to depict Kaikohe's history.
Symphony's art teacher and Ākau facilitator, Makareta Jahnke, quickly recognised her creative talent and the studio offered her an internship, which she started last year.
"Through the Mobil design, I became more confident and believed in myself more, because of the positive feedback from the community," Symphony says. "I'm so passionate about art, so it was a buzz, especially learning the tāniko and whakairo patterns and simply making something that is in there permanently. Now I'm a junior designer at Ākau and I'm planning on becoming a graphic designer, specialising in Māori art."
The Mobil station is one of a stream of projects in Kaikohe, tapping into taitamariki creativity to build a sense of identity in the town. Initiated by the kura and Ākau, these schemes are centered on community and kaupapa Māori. Concept-design workshops take place with the youth to explore ideas, then professional artists and tradespeople bring them to life.
Te Reo On The Streets is bold, colourful and in your face. It began this summer after taitamariki said they wanted te reo Māori to have a ubiquitous presence in the town. Workshops with students from the Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Kaikohe delve into whakataukī (proverbs) to determine their essence. Key words that resonate with the taitamariki are painted on to the shop fronts on Broadway by professionals and taitamariki, including Symphony.
"This is my favourite project," she says. "We get to paint big murals of the local taitamariki's mahi and encourage te reo." Kaikohe can look forward to more te reo; four buildings have been transformed so far this summer and six more are planned for this year.
Te reo Māori is also being made more visual in Kaikohe after students from Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Kaikohe created a tīhāte (T-shirt) brand. Based on kīwaha (Māori sayings), they devised concept and design of the tīhāte. Available from the kura, profits from sales go back there, empowering the students with business skills in the process.
Also from the kura, Annay Kara was involved in an Ākau project. This one saw her and fellow students, design flags, colourful and vibrant, that were installed along Broadway to boost community identity and encourage te reo. "My design was based on the phone area code for Kaikohe and berries from the kohekohe tree, which our town got its name from and my ancestors survived on," says Annay, who plans to attend art school. "Designing the flag was great, I learned new things, and it was cool to see our work in the community. It was a good feeling making the community look prettier."
Chatty, upbeat and charming, Kaikohe's Matenga Te Kaha Ashby, 19, is an actor who starred with Rose Matafeo in Baby Done. When he walked past the Ākau studio four years ago, he stepped inside to see what was going on. He returned a few days later with sketches of furniture designs. It planted a seed. At the time, he says, he'd fallen in with a "challenging crowd" at Northland College but when he graduated he applied for an internship at Ākau and is now one of their junior designers.
Matenga's dream of starting a business that simplifies the house-building process for whānau feels more attainable thanks to skills he's acquired through these projects; project management, IT, facilitating and networking.
Housing issues – and resolving them through design – has been a passion for Matenga.
"Since I was a baby, my family has moved around a lot and my brother developed rheumatic fever.
"I know lots of families who had similar situations. Through the projects I've worked on I've learned that whatever dreams you have can become a reality – that's what we like to teach our young bucks."
He is passionate about bringing to life the dreams of his community. Which means a grassroots approach – like working with boys from Kaikohe East Primary School.
Matenga and the boys designed and built – with professional carpenters – a fort playground at the school, based on the concept of hauora (wellbeing). It was a process which the boys thrived on: "I could relate to them," says Matenga, "as I was suspended from school for building a fort outside the school grounds. I was disengaged and so were they. But through designing and building the fort, these boys became engaged. You could see their behaviour change in a positive way. They were outside using their hands and hammering, developing skills needed in life."
Matenga and Symphony have also worked on a winter festival – Bling Bling Toi Marama – a three-night light festival, with Ākau.
The idea came from one of Ākau's junior designers who said she felt unsafe walking through the town at night due to a lack of lighting. Using creativity to address a real problem, over 200 taitamariki became involved in its creation.
Young people from nine schools, kura kaupapa and preschools across Ōkaihau, Moerewa and Kaikohe each brought a handmade glow-in-the-dark sculpture to the event.
"Kids think outside the box, that's what I love," Matenga says. "Engaging with them gives them a sense of identity for where they live. We just indulge them in kaupapa Māori to encourage them to love their culture. It helps them to be confident and strong, because they understand where they're from and their people."
More than 2000 people (half the population of Kaikohe) took part, with queues weaving around the block. The location was a site on Broadway that once housed the Kaikohe Hotel; it was the first time the site had been used for a community project since the building was knocked down five years ago. Plans are already underway for a Bling Bling next year.
Matenga also helped create the concept for a new community basketball court in Kaikohe's Memorial Park. Based on the mahi (work) of a rōpū of kōtiro (group of girls) from Kaikohe Intermediate, its traditional niho taniwha design symbolises mahitahi (teamwork) and leadership.
"The young people are out there playing on it every day – they recognise the Māori designs and love the colour," Mere says. "Because of its impact on the community and council, we've been engaged to redesign the whole park."
Art and design are not the only ways Māori culture is celebrated in the community by the youth. Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Kaikohe uses the Māori lunar calendar as a guide for undertaking activities. Thalia Kake-McGee, 14, loves joining other students from the school who, twice a week, clean up the local awa (waterways) at Mangamutu Stream. "We pull out weeds, move the harakeke so the water has shade and sun, fix fences and get rid of weeds from fences, making it look nice," she says.
The work goes beyond Kaikohe, linking with other schools and sees senior students visiting Hokianga harbour for water-quality testing and the catch and release of eels. "It's a chance to give back to Papatūānuku," Thalia says.
Through this commitment of Kaikohe's schools and Ākau, young people celebrate themselves and their Māoridom as co-authors of these public spaces. This positivity ripples out to whānau and friends in the process.
One local who witnesses this regularly is Moko Tepania, 30, one of the youngest councillors on the Far North District Council. Involved with youth in Te Tai Tokerau, he is also a te reo Māori teacher at Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Kaikohe and a member of the Kaikohe-Hokianga Community Board. Moko praises any work of taitamariki that grows from a concept to their ideas being explored and then becoming a reality.
"It brings a sense of pride to the township and area," he says. "It's one thing to have cool activities happening in Kaikohe but it's another for the taitamariki to take ownership of it. If you can put an idea on paper and it becomes a reality, you develop a growth mindset."
Nurturing te reo through these schemes is vital because language is the basis of the culture. "In Kaikohe, 78 per cent are Māori and, at 24 per cent, we have one of the highest statistics of te reo speakers in our country," Moko says. "So it's vital taitamariki see it and learn it – it's part of who they are. If students can be fluent, it will be so useful when going into a job. That cultural competence is important for their futures."
It's easy to join the dots between children valuing their ideas to them imagining career choices as they mature. Take Symphony – her experience in workshops and time as an intern gave her a foundation for job prospects as an artist.
If there is a town in Aotearoa that can be modelled on honouring children in the design of its community, Kaikohe is it. Perhaps its strength lies in the backbone of Māori culture that underlies it or simply the love the people have for where they call home.
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