SELECTED PAST & CURRENT PROJECT WORK
The mission of AMTK is to activate the homeless community through Te Ao Māori, to realise their strength, potential, and to help reclaim their voice in the spirit of protection, partnership, and participation. We do this with partnership to the wider community, creative projects and capacity building.
We have worked on a partner basis with AMTK Trust Board and team to advocate within governance in Auckland for their voices to be heard, and their experience and cultural insight to be respected and adopted in the issues of the street where it relates to Māori.
Active Citizens is a social leadership programme which promotes intercultural dialogue and social responsibility as key leadership competencies in the 21st century. The Active Citizens programme promotes community-led social development and motivates members of communities to take responsibility for their social needs, while giving them the knowledge, skills and experience to address them.
The Karangahape Road Business Association welcomed everybody to celebrate Matariki and the fresh new look of Karangahape Road at Te Karanga ā Hape, a progressive street-long party on Saturday 26 June 2021 from 3-8pm.
We worked with an amazing team of local creative producers alongside Karangahape Road businesses to create a packed schedule with more than 60 events and activities, full of sensory delights.
The event theme Te Ao Mārama / The Enlightened World, acknowledges the Matariki star cluster, plus the 1930s community project that first lit the strip with electric lighting, and the inclusive vibrancy of the area we love today.
Winner of the Human Rights Commission Supreme Award for their Diversity In Action Programme, The PIYN (People In Your Neighbourhood) project created by Gareth Farry, involved aspiring artists and performers from Auckland’s ethnic communities, working with the best of contemporary UK talent, to create, celebrate and collaborate.
We have been involved over the years in various music exchange programmes with partners in both Taiwan and South Korea. These projects have resulted in cross-cultural collaborations, TV programmes and artist tours. The focus has been on Indigenous skills exchanges and mentoring programmes.
Partnering with MC META in Korea, We conceived and produced the Arts Speaks Symposium in Korean and English in Auckland City..
Gareth took on the Acting Festival Director Role for New Zealand’s premier Short Film Festival - Show Me Shorts - for the 2021 season.
From over 1600 entries from across the world, the Show Me Shorts programming team curated a spectacular programme of 74 of the world’s best short films including three music videos.
We had the distinct pleasure in March 2021, of curating and hosting the space for shared experiences at the AKl CultureFest called Pā Nui.
Pā Nui is a zone for people from diverse ethnic communities in Auckland including former refugees and migrants to share experiences through language, story-telling, comedy, music, dance, workshops and activations. A safe space in a small marquee with a small stage, lots of cushions and opportunities to interact.
This two person show Poropiti is a series of vignettes traversing different points in Māori history; from utopian visions of a pre-European Aotearoa, to the emergence of the Māori prophetic movements, including that of T W Ratana; to meditations on current day capitalist dystopia. The show incorporates physical-theatre, choreography and live music, and brings innovative theatre practitioner Tola Newbery, and the acclaimed voice and musical presence of Mara TK into challenging multi-disciplinary roles on stage;
Auckland’s typewriter poetry activation involves a poet sitting at a welcoming table, behind a vintage typewriter, ready to type poetry in a spur of the moment interaction with passers-by. The poet manages to engage in the simplest yet magical way with total strangers, by offering a free piece of poetry. By requesting a word, feeling or subject, the poet is able to forge emotional links with the public and provide a “random act of kindness” in the form of a typed poem to the requester.
Poems can be a love letter to a special person, a cry for catharsis or simply a bit of word-play fun. Each time, a unique moment is captured and an inspired passerby gets to experience an unexpected urban activation to brighten their day and to share with family and friends later.
Splice is a social infrastructure agency and a movement of people connecting and building neighbourhood and social cohesion in Auckland’s City Centre. Our vision is to build neighbourhood and create community in Auckland City centre. Our values are courage, compassion and community and we practise hospitality and inclusiveness in all we do. Our team is made up of a group of diverse and creative people all passionate about connecting those who live, work and play in Auckland city centre.
Translate the City is a project taking everyday cultural wisdom, stories and language idioms from the many different cultures in Auckland, and spreading them via translation and various activations to enhance connectedness and shared belonging in the city.
Vision
To transform an under utilised urban space (temporarily or long-term), into an exciting food forest/physic garden space that promotes connection-forming between people, medicinal and community focused uses for inner city land, and inspires people with a new vision of what urban living can be.
We believe that Auckland, as one of the World’s most liveable cities, should develop areas of interest within the city, to attract visitors through uniqueness, and also engage with communities for longevity and with a view to building sustainable city ventures.
Showcase Scotland, at Celtic Connections, is the largest gathering of the international music community in the Scottish calendar. A chance for promoters, record labels, agents and festival organisers to meet both the Scottish industry and each other. A chance to see, first hand, a vast array of performances from the cream of Scottish talent all of whom perform as part of the world’s largest Celtic music festival. Six days, 12 venues, over 60 artists and bands, seminars, trade talks and networking with delegates from over 40 countries.
Sugarlicks is a boutique agency, label and production house operating in the music, culture and arts industries in Auckland Aotearoa New Zealand. The label was established in 2001 as a result of the live nights at famous Auckland venue Khuja Lounge, where a melting pot of artists came to mash together Pacific and global soul and hiphop, percussion and electronic music with spoken word, activism and performance.
The label came to specialise in electronic soul music with a Pacific yet global flavour.
Between 2001-2017 the label released 12 albums, 5 twelve inch vinyl singles, and one seven inch single in Europe, North America and Japan. More releases planned for 2023.
Khuja Lounge was an iconic nightclub and venue on Auckland’s famous Karangahape “K” Rd from 1997-2013. Khuja was conceived as a melting pot of culture, music and style and came to define a generation of Pacific cool unparalleled in Auckland City at the time and since.
This project involves the scoping, designing, building and ultimately testing of an online tool called a DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) for Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand and represents a great opportunity to establish innovative and influential partnerships, that can not only bolster Amnesty's reputation within New Zealand, but also reinforce it as a thought leader in the field of Human Rights Education (HRE).