Local Focus: Te Ara Patupaiarehe

Manutahi Hill in Ruatorea bringing arts and history to life.

A walk up Manutahi Hill in Ruatoria was the inspiration behind the light show and exhibition Te Ara Patupaiarehe, held during the recent Te Tairāwhiti Arts Festival.

Using the stories of kuia Kuini Moehau-Reedy, students of Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Waiū o Ngāti Porou created fairy doors to be displayed along the Manutahi Hill walkway.

Sports Gisborne Tairāwhiti community connector Rawinia Parata came up with the idea when walking with other mothers.

They were on the Titirangi Challenge, originally a Gisborne Challenge which has been adapted for Manutahi Hill, in which participants will climb the hill 68 times.

The distance climbed equals the summit of Mt Everest.

"I thought it would be an opportunity to enhance our natural environment and create a space that would be interesting for our children," Parata said.

The exhibition was a collaboration between students and teachers of Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Waiū o Ngāti Porou, Hoea! Gallery, Te Tairāwhiti Arts Festival, and Ngāti Porou Whanui Trust which owns the hill.

Principal Philip Heeney said the school was only too willing to help bring the stories, songs and items students have learned from Kuia Kuini Moehau-Reedy to live through their artwork.

"The thing that really interests me is people can come up with ideas and go through a process where those ideas are brought to fruition," he said.

Media and visual arts teacher Jual Toroa said the brief they received was to create fairy doors.

The creative process started with students finding inspiration from other Māori art forms such as whakairo, tā moko, tāniko and tukutuku.

Kuini Moehau-Reedy, known by students as Nanny Moehau, came into the school to do a korero on patupaiarehe.

"The first part of her korero was about Niwareka and Mataora and how Niwareka was part tūrehu and Mataora was human.

"So we have that whakapapa, that connection, we are practically one," Toroa said.

Once students had their final drawings they digitised them so they could be laser cut, creating the artwork.

Event organiser Rawinia Parata said her ultimate aspiration - hosting a well-attended, high-calibre arts festival in Ruatoria - came to fruition with more than 600 people attending in sessions over the night.