North Waikato Sustainable Art Festival is a boutique art festival in the Waikato

MARCH 16th and 17th 2024

Purpose

North Waikato Sustainable Art Festival is a small 2 day boutique art festival held in rural Pokeno. Our purpose is to offer an art festival with mana, to offer art experiences that strengthen and enrich our communities, expanding cultural horizons by being a catalyst for sustainability, Kaitiakitanga, contemporary art, and sustainable art.

The festival is held on a private ecological reserve by Kaitiaki, guardians of the land, who respect Aotearoa New Zealands natural resources as taonga - treasure. The property protects native regenerating manuka and totara forest, natural Waikato 'living water' ecosystems, and natural habitats and wildlife as ecological treasure.

Our purpose is to offer an inspiring weekend programme of talks, creative activities and workshops for all ages. Join us for a weekend of diversity, of inclusivity, of knowledge sharing through art and creativity, of Aroha, and be inspired to live a life more sustainable.

Vision

We want to inspire people to make bigger picture choices that have ripple effects in their environments and communities. Our individual choices may not seem to make much impact, but like a stone thrown into a pond the ripples flow outwards, individual drops join together forming a collective ocean of difference, leaving a legacy for those in our footsteps making their own contribution towards a healthier planet.

With a positive creative approach to ecological and environmental issues we hope to inspire people to use sustainable materials and low impact practices to create beautiful art and gardens, to plant hope that it is possible to live sustainably with the most powerful force we know - Nature

Ngā Mātāpono - Our Values

Kaitiakitanga

Look after the land and the land will look after you.

We are custodians. Honoured to be kaitiaki of our land. We value and care for the land as a taonga which will bring our community together through art and sustainability events.

Manaakitanga

We care about the sutainability of our New Zealand and Waikato community, and have created the festival as a platform for connection and creativity. We want to be great ancestors. build a sustainable legacy for all generations and cultures, and continue to inspire people into the future. Our Kaupapa is to elevate the taonga and talent of our community.

Kotahitanga

We support our community in an environment of trust and integrity, respecting and engaging with Te Tiriti O Waitangi and biculturalism as agents to bring New Zealands communities together.

Hiranga

We strive for excellence in and are respectful of all disciplines and multiple perspectives that enrich our experiences and expand our thinking on sustainability and art.

Te āpōpō - The future

Long Term Goals

My dream is to open a sustainability centre on my land that will be an education centre for our North Waikato community. We would help our community by offering sustainability education to schools, to community members, and a space for businesses to host training events or display their sustainable innovations to the community. We have a beautiful site for a centre in the North Waikato. Our centre would welcome the sharing of ideas in our community, and the mixed perspectives of people from different disciplines, cultures, and businesses contributing different ways of understanding the world.

A sustainability centre would provide our community, our schools, and our businesses opportunities for learning and discussion, stimulating particularly our young people to think about their own innovative solutions to the challenges of environmental, social and economic sustainability they will face in the future. At the sustainability centre people will learn about mātauranga taiao, the natural world that surrounds us, the interconnection of people and nature, the land, water, climate, and living beings. They would discover the close connection between sustainability principles, scientific knowledge, and mātauranga Māori. A sustainability centre could give them a hands on holistic understanding of environmental systems, self-sufficiency, circular economies, regenerative land use for food growing, fostering kai security, and ways to reduce their waste going to landfill.

We need to learn these skills as human demands are exceeding environmental capacities, seriously threatening the wellbeing of future generations of humans and other species. We need to shift to a pathway of environmental sustainability, change our attitudes to production and consumption, and our relationships with our environment. A sustainability centre will incorporate knowledge of the technical and physical sciences, as well as mātauranga and experiential knowledge.

Let us not forget art. A sustainability centre must be filled with beautiful sustainable art. Because artists are magicians who transform us with the truth and beauty they bring into the world. Imagine a world without music, or literature, or dance, or song, or great oratory. Imagine a world without your favourite stories, or poems, or books, or movies, where you can no longer hear or sing your favourite songs. Art is important. Art is a healer - like medicine. Medicine heals the body - Art heals the soul. The body and the mind cannot thrive where the soul is famished.

That is my dream.

Jane Crosbie