Indigenous brands, Maori business, Kaupapa Growth and innovation, collaborative pilot projects, culture connection and exchange, design enabled economic, culturally enriched.
Culturally Shared Landscape Wananga
A multi centre series of one day wananga focused around the issues, opportunities and techniques of developing the public landscapes of Aotearoa in ways that allows them to culturally shared.
Location:
Multi-centre wananga offering - ki Otautahi, Poneke, Tamaki
Iwi:
Primarily: Kai Tahu, Ati Awa, Nga iwi o Tamaki Makaurau
Nga Aho practitioner:
Neil Challenger
Project participants (Nga Aho members):
Phil Wihongi, Craig Pauling, Lucy Tukua
Culturally Shared Landscape Wananga
Most of Aotearoa/New Zealand's landscapes are culturally shared, (think squares, parks, subdivisions, streets, reserves and national parks). Well that is the theory. They are public places, and the activities they are designed to accommodate and the narratives they express through their names and the heroes they honour should speak to more than just the Pakeha majority. But this isn’t the norm. Where they ought to facilitate and reflect the Māori world as well as the Pakeha, most public landscapes only speak English, and the face that looks back when you look at them is almost always white. This is a major challenge for the predominately white landscape architectural community whose cultural knowledge and socio-cultural understandings often don’t support culturally inclusive design. This wananga series was aimed at overcoming this problem, by helping attendees to understand the issues, opportunities, and approaches to creating public landscapes that are culturally shared. The wananga were organised and led by Neil Challenger, Phil Wihongi and Alan Titchener from Te Tau-a-Nuku (the Maori Landscape Architect’s Ropu), with these three teaching into each wananga with the support of mana whenua and locally based case studies to ground it among the local people and local issues. The wananga were attended by 145 people nationwide.