Students visit Hiku Art and Vinyl to view their artwork in the exhibition.
Students visit Hiku Art and Vinyl to view their artwork in the exhibition.
Northland’s Hikurangi School students have explored different artistic mediums over the last term to inform artwork that places their home front and centre.
Kāinga - Little Stories of Hikurangi has been driven by artists Lisa Clunie, Laurel Devenie and Thorsten Hoppe as part of the Creative inSchools programme.
A cyanotype of the original Hikurangi School by students from Room 6.
Students in Years 6-8 explored a range of creative methods including painting, printmaking, photography, puppeteering, drawing and more to teach them that thinking differently is a strength.
Lisa Clunie said the school had already been closely engaged with the Hikurangi Museum of which she is a big part due to the introduction of the Aotearoa New Zealand histories curriculum.
The group of artists then came together through the “Play it Forward” initiative and decided to take a multi-disciplinary approach to the Creative in Schools programme.
Students taking part in the programme were granted access to their local maunga [mountain] which they discovered had expansive views of the harbour, coast and Hikurangi areas.
They also did a hīkoi throughout Hikurangi Village to inform their art and interviewed key figures in the community which helped them present a live radio show on Beagle Radio.
Their collaborative works have been featured in an installation at Hikurangi School and immortalised in a digital walking tour created with artwork via the PickPath app.
Clunie said the initiative gave students a “toolbox” for being creative.
“Creativity is a different approach and lens on how you can approach a problem. It’s problem-solving and communication,” she said.
Hīkoi - a digital composition of students' drawings, prints, and paintings.
One of the activities in the initiative was for the students to present a picture or object and tell a story about it.
“If you think, quite often as adults we don’t often listen to the little stories. And its the little stories children have that are actually really big stories.”
Clunie said it was important to share the work with the wider community to showcase and support creative efforts.
Being creative brings joy to many people’s lives and people are able to come along and share in that joy, she said.
The art exhibition is at Hiku Art and Vinyl in King St, Hikurangi from now until Sunday, August 18.
The exhibition is open 10am to 3.30pm on weekdays and 9am to 2pm on the weekend.
To access the digital walking tour download the free app PickPath then look for “Hīkoi - a walk through Hikurangi” - or use the QR code at the exhibition.
