Platforms for change

Wellington’s Kia Mau contemporary indigenous arts festival has become an agenda-setter for other arts events.

- DIONNE CHRISTIAN

In late summer 2015, Hone Kouka accidentally founded an arts festival. One of our most lauded playwrights, he wanted to help raise the profile of other Māori writers and performers just as his The Beautiful Ones was due to open at Wellington's Circa Theatre. He visited other venues to ask if they could put on some shows at the same time.

When they all said yes, a festival flickered into life dubbed "Ahi Kaa" - "burning fires". It was an apt description of what Kouka wanted to achieve, but even he did not anticipate how bright that fire would blaze.

Eight years on, Ahi Kaa is now the Kia Mau Festival ("a call to stay, an invitation to join us"), produced by Kouka and theatre and film-maker partner Miria George. The biennial event gathers local, contemporary, indigenous performers as well as First Nations artists from around the world.

Now that Kia Mau is firmly established and has joined a network of contemporary indigenous arts events - such as Melbourne's Yirramboi, Hawai'i's Festival of Pacific Arts & Culture and Vancouver's Talking Stick Festival - the couple have set their sights on something bigger. They want to make Te Upoko o te Ika a Māui (the Wellington region) a global centre for contemporary indigenous arts - and they have financial backing from Creative New Zealand and the Wellington Regional Economic Development Agency, WellingtonNZ.

"I want to make it Wellington because I love that city and it's been really good to me, so it's my way of giving back to a place where I've had such great creative experiences," says Kouka, who arrived in the capital from Dunedin to go to drama school 30-odd years ago.

"A lot of the time, Wellington is a young city, and our young ones are a big engine, so you keep feeding them by giving them platforms, giving them opportunities, and they will feed you back."