Kaiako

Kiako (Education)

One of the things mahu are traditionally associated with, is education. From 2003 to 2020 I was a tutor at WITT.

I began as the expert in the front of the room and by the end had reached the point of Kiako, which is a situation of building a relationship of equality where the tutor both teaches and learns. This is a much more wholistic approach to education and aims to empower students.

Recently I’ve also become involved in folding intergenerationality into creative projects, and this has led to education activity as well.

This identity graphic has elements of star charts – particularly ones that use thirty two houses.

As part of creative practices, I have folded in whakapapa genealogy, which goes back to the past, into the now and on to the future with future generations. So I became intergenerational, and now put out to do things in an intergenerational space. Above is a photograph by Elli Field, of a talk for experienced ages, and below are photographs from a Family Art workshop. Both were at the Govett-Brewster. I’m planning on running a sequence of talks and a Family Art workshop one a year for the five years of a window commission.

I prepare a range of resources, including outlines of imagery I use, which you can see being shown on the left. On right is a child looking through a prism, which throws a coloured spectrum around sources of light.

In 2021 and 2022 I was Kaiako at The Learning Connexion, a sole purpose Arts Education school established by Jonathan Milne and Alice Wilson Milne. A unique environment. This was all during lockdown so was online, and the students of the level 7 programme were amazing. In this time I fulfilled being Kaiako.

I worked at WITT from 2003 to 2020, which is Taranaki’s Polytechnic. I had some really wonderful years at WITT and am grateful for my time there, the people I worked with and the stduents I met.