Te Waimate Mission, the country’s second-oldest building, will host a creative workshop on Sunday.
Northland creatives can get some inspiration at one of the oldest buildings in the country.
Te Waimate Mission Station, cared for by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga at Waimate North, is hosting a series of creative workshops on Sunday, November 17.
The 190-year-old historic mission will be buzzing with creativity hosting three workshops to complement the weekend’s vintage TinType portrait sessions.
Artist and writer Annais Allen will host a SoulCollage session in which participants will be able to create unique collaged cards with their own deep personal meaning, experiencing a still point in their lives where parts of self and scattered energies find their way home through the creation of these precious taonga. The session runs from 10am-1pm.
Photographers have a choice of two different, but complementary, sessions led by Claire Gordon of Flash Gordon Photography.
In the first session, entitled Picnic in the Garden – A Colourful Outdoor Photography Session with Claire at Flash Gordon Photography (1.30-3.30pm), participants will learn how to get out of auto mode and get creative with landscape photography using the beautiful gardens of Te Waimate Mission, which are currently in bloom.
The second session will be Light and Shade – A Moody Photography Session inside the Mission House (4pm-6pm) where participants will focus on mood, and inject some ambience into their photography using the iconic Mission house as inspiration.
All workshops include a tour of the mission house and tea and coffee.
For more information on these and the TinType portrait sessions – and to book – visit the individual workshop listings: https://www.facebook.com/tewaimatemissionhouse/events.
■ Te Waimate Mission House, built in 1832, is the only survivor of three mission houses founded in 1830 on behalf of the Church Missionary Society by the Reverend Samuel Marsden with the agreement of local iwi Ngāpuhi.
Established as a model farming village, complete with a flour mill, blacksmiths, printery, carpenter’s shop, school and church, Te Waimate Mission was the fullest realisation of Samuel Marsden’s belief that spiritual and practical instruction should be combined as a one-two punch.
Aotearoa New Zealand’s second oldest surviving building is an elegant two-storeyed affair, with wide verandas and a low-pitched hipped roof, complemented by Georgian-style dormer windows.
It also houses an impressive collection. You’ll see period furniture and a range of original agricultural and carpentry tools, what’s left of the country’s first water-powered flour mill and relics from Bedggood’s Blacksmiths Shop.