Re-Imagining the City: ‘HOW CREATIVE TALENTS SHAPE OUR CITIES’

Re-imagining The City
‘HOW CREATIVE TALENTS SHAPE OUR CITIES’

SPEECH; a panel presentation given at the invitation of the British Council,

with AV pioneers D-Fuse (UK), Sue Gallagher (AUT) and Richard Reid (Architect)
MIC:Galatos, Auckland, New Zealand
17 October 2007

Kia ora Koutou.

I am an artist, which for me means that I wake up every day in service to my community… I think a lot about people, and the big picture of where we are headed.

I am unashamedly optimistic that we in New Zealand will lead the world in a new paradigm of creative future making. Our spectacular connection to the raw elements and forces of life, our deep knowledge of whanau, community and collaboration, our very broad international networks, our rich spirituality… and our stubbornness to endure, will I believe, converge to activate new ways to reveal the way of thinking and way of working together which will generate a bold new approach to art, design, landscape, architecture, construction, and culture.

My big idea is that we focus our attention squarely on an ambition to punch above our weight in the realm of the built environment … in the deliberate conceiving and building of our homes, our towns and our cities…

What if the building of the whole of the city was perceived as a creative project?… not a series of problems to be solved, but a truly opportunistic creative project …

The context for cities is complexity. So what if we embarked on that creative process with a new level of participation… a deep diversity… a deep collaboration of future making...

My question is … How will we cultivate the enormous creativity required to shape a practical, prosperous, inclusive, expressive future ? My answer is, deep collaboration.

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I came to the city from its edges. I was raised on a farm in Taranaki - a lush volcanic landscape. There didn’t seem to be too much ‘urban’ about life on a farm in small town Stratford. Somehow though, I see that I was being prepped for my life as an artist and designer…

My neighbour as a young girl was Deed Stockwell … a pioneer man of the land, and a premier storyteller. His vast stories fuelled my imagination and expanded my sense of the present, stretching me back to the past with an acute sense of importance for the simplicity of the bush, the horses, the dogs, the muster, the music, the friends and family of lives lived. I honour Deed today, as his final muster called him home last weekend, and we have celebrated his passing. His funeral reminded me how this gentle spirit had taught me so much about life and death - as I would watch his graceful ease at farming, making and taking the lives of the animals, in an endless cycle of seasons.

Years later I find myself living and working within Tamaki Makarau /Auckland - discovering urban-ness... Through the layers of landscape and community, the sandstone and volcanic landforms… overlaid with decade upon decade of people, lives lived, industry, culture, spirituality…

And it has amused me to discover in the fundamental fabric of Auckland, what were once small rural towns are now physical and emotional textures embedded within the heart of suburban communities. The indigenous values, patterns and stories are alive and informing peoples lives.

My origins on the land, are the same origins of this city… and those origins are still vividly expressed within the industrial and modern urban structures. This is in part, who we are. And to remember this is liberating.

This (image) is the Grafton Gully. It is one of several gully’s which form the structure of central Auckland.

Under this road is a stream called Waiparuru, spring feed waters carrying memory of a place like this. The artery of urban life is now this invisible holy water, mixed with the fossil fuelled motorway, sinuous frictionless zones of passage.

But what is not frictionless I found, is the grief associated with this Gully’s stories of loss –

I was engaged by Transit NZ to create artworks for the motorway environment.

Getting to know this gully was for me, quite tough and transformational... engaging with Auckland’s stories through the support of many knowledgeable storytellers… like Ngarimu Blair and Pita Turei, Richard Simpson, James Belich…. My role was to translate and transform some of the layers of story...
those of warfare,
loss and reclamation of authority for Ngati Whatua O Orakei, Ngati Paoa, Ngai Tai;
loss of habitat for tui, snail, frog;
loss of an inner city sanctuary forest for local people, a forest that reputably was some of the most botanically diverse of any forest in the North Island… right in the heart of our city up until 1962;
loss of lives through suicide from the Grafton Bridge,
loss of a resting place for 4200 Aucklanders with the destruction of the cemetery;
loss of the possibility to walk or cycle down the deep gully floor;

This sculptural installation sought to be a celebration of those ancient pathways of remembering. Maumahara mo Waiparuru. Remembering ancient pathways. Driving within this environment, hopefully marked to provide a chance to reconnect.

Glen Innes (image) was an urban redevelopment project which involved masterplanning the town centre and the redesign and construction of the central Mayfair Place Mall. I collaborated with Isthmus Group Landscape Architects and many others on our team and with the community and business owners.
This is a whole story in itself… layers and layers of story… human relationship through hui, town meetings, cups of tea, singing, prayer, design workshops… a project spanning over several years.

The sculptural space we created was one outcome of this project. The work is called ‘embrace’. It is a work all about unity…. People sit, or play within this circular stone space. It offers a tangible connection to local landscape, to the stories of Glen Innes, to their place.

There were several hundred people involved in practical ways on this project. That is a lot of participation, and a lot of opportunity for connection and relationship building. Art making for the city was in this case a networking of people and identity.

Albany Lakes is one of my current projects. This is raw earth… recently farmed and cropped. Now destined to be a 6 hectare public park surrounded by high rise apartments and shopping malls.
The space is framed by history and a naked future waiting to roll out around it.

My project within this project is the creation of an ‘art bridge’ across the lakes. It is a team project with North Shore City Council, Beca engineers, Soul Environments landscape architects, and New Zealand Strong Construction.
The key idea here is for the bridge to maintain a glimpse of that elemental rawness, so that we don’t forget what the basic building blocks of life are: earth, water, light… people… and the dynamic of relationship between them. The bridge provides a convergence space.

We are ready to build the bridge now, with designs completed… and the earth and lakes shaped. We have installed the stone structures which the bridge sits within…

Cities are the full spectrum of life. Art, landscape and architecture, engineering, planning, culture, community, business… and so many more dimensions… all inform the outcome of the design processes which shape change in the city.

I believe we need new definitions of growth… In an ambitious society such as ours, we need to debate what it is we want to grow.

What out of all that we a have created through the recent industrial age, is relevant for the new ‘industrious revolution’?

The growing complexities in the design demands of cities, requires new systems of collaboration which can embrace and thrive within complex, diverse environments. The mechanistic, rationalistic paradigm is sluggish, awkward, adversarial and inefficient.

Too many good ideas die in isolation chambers.
I believe in valuing all who have ideas... ways to proliferate opportunities for those ideas to be shared, acted on, expanded… We lack only the confidence to share what we see, to engage with each other and communicate our ideas… boldly.

Lets invent the best practice here in New Zealand – lets create working arrangements which nurture diversity. Lets all get involved in this…

Imagine if we transformed toxins and illness and grew imagination and beauty… … imagine the motorways were teeming with cyclists and skateboarders, even for a day… a human scale mobility on mass and visible within the mainline arteries of the city… a beautiful image of restoration…

Imagine if we re-instated the Kiwi Saturday Working Bee tradition, and people on-mass cooperated to create neighbourhoods which were eccentrically unique to the residents living in them… with artworks, gardens, music, dance, and street environments which teemed with culture.

Imagine if we cultivated creative comradery across all sectors and professions… to make this future making a shared project, a high performance creative team project ...

END