Residing at 74 Hawdon Street in Sydenham, Ōtautahi, is the whare to Te Wā, The Space. Following their Boosted campaign, Te Wā reached their fundraising goal of $25,000 on the creative crowdfunding platform. The campaign exhibited both past and present Ōtautahi dwellers coming together in support of a project that epitomises the vivacious, ingenious, and fresh spirit bubbling up through the 03’s underground. Gremlins’ Ella Gibson sat down with the creative director of Te Wā, Bea Gladding (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou), to find out more about the kaupapa.
Te Wā is a two story building containing multiple multifunctional spaces, sitting in the heart of Ōtautahi. The space will incorporate various components such as a music studio, a performance space, theatre/rehearsal rooms, and co-working areas to hold community events, experimental performances, hui, music production and DJ workshops, rehearsal and studio spaces, residencies, and wānanga. Striving to facilitate artistic expression in a city that has a history of ideas that flourish outside of mainstream appeal, Te Wā recognises the responsibility to celebrate these outlying expressions together as a community, under the guidance of Te Tiriti and experience of our ancestors.
“I think the main mission of Te Wā is to provide space for marginalised people, and people that potentially are more vulnerable, and less able to attain jobs in the arts industry. Another mission is to be able to provide space for people to play and - as cliche as it sounds - be themselves truly, to the core, and make connections with other people without involving money, in a non-networking environment - more like building whānau and whanaungatanga within a less heightened and minimally commercial space. We want Te Wā to be a place to experiment, to be joyful, and to create connections, as well as providing resources to people who wouldn’t otherwise get them” Bea shared.
The principal Te Wā collective consists of four core members; Bea Gladding, Josiah Morgan (Kāi Tahu, Ngāti Maniapoto), Tayla Tuhikarama (Waikato-Tainui), and Shaun McTague (Tangata Tiriti).
“My name is Bea, also known as “Mr Meaty Boy”, and I am the creative director of Te Wā. I reckon what I generally do is curate vibes, with, and alongside BIPOC, Pasifika, Māori, and Queer artists and people from our community to bring diversity to our community and make it better for everyone” Bea shared.
Bea continued to introduce the rest of the crew, “Shaun who is also known as “protectionspell” is an amazing producer and software developer. He made the website for Te Wā, and he’s also incredibly resourceful, and he essentially turned himself into a graphic designer for our project! He is going to be a technical manager, and is the most wonderful ally that our space could ask for.” Shaun’s passion about access to technology is preeminent to his involvement in Te Wā. “He’s specifically really passionate about access to resources for anyone who’s felt like they couldn’t access it before.
So he is going to be amazing, because that is what our job is; providing the tools to be able to express yourself in a way that you maybe thought you couldn’t before” Bea disclosed.
Josiah Morgan is a queer interdisciplinary artist, author, theatremaker, and educator based in Ōtautahi. “Josiah is probably the most driven person I’ve ever met. He not only has the ability to do all the artist things like being creative, collaborative, and playful. But also he is insane at admin!” Bea laughed. “He sent me an email the other day that was like an email of another email he was going to send, and the email said, “is this too much, or not enough?” It was genuinely the most well-written, fully-fledged three paragraphs I had ever read in my life! As well as being ridiculously talented, I don’t know what more you could ask for! Especially for artists having to do a lot of their own everything now, he sort of defines that to me. He is also the co-founder of local publisher Ngā Pukapuka Pekapeka. Kāi Tahu as well, so mana whenua, which is really important to us in making sure we include people that are from here” Bea asserted.
Tayla Tuhikarama is an established DJ and she plays under the alias “Tikka.” She also serves as an executive member for the Māori Pharmacists Association, passionate about seeing positive change for Māori in all her roles. “She really understands how legislation and the wider formatting for how industries can affect spaces like ours, or even just people. She’s got her pharmacy perspective, and she’s got her DJ perspective as well. She actually reached out to me a couple of years ago, and sent all these paragraphs. I said to her, “it sounds like you want to start a non-profit?” and she was like, “oh no no no… maybe?” So this is her vision too. It’s just like we’re collaborating and continuing things that we’re already doing in our lives and have wanted to do for a long time” Bea explained.
The origin story of the Te Wā collective was an act of serendipity. “The origins of Te Wā are from two places: from our lives that we already live, and then also from our friends (Josie and Costa) that helped us to see that we could actually have this as a possibility. The space is a manifestation of all the work I’ve talked about from everyone already. We got the space, offered to us from our friends that live next door, and they were like, “we can give you really cheap rent. We’ll give you two months free and we can give you whatever support you need to get there.” It’s taken a bit of time and they’ve let us have a bit of time to figure out what the fuck we’re doing” Bea disclosed.
With the space secured, a name for the collective was next. “It’s funny because a good artist steals ideas, right?” Bea laughed. “It’s not the name that’s stolen, but there’s something alluring to me about the experimental art spaces in New York in the ‘60s; the uprising of experimental arts and performance art.
This is when people thought, “I can be weird, and people actually might want to see it, or might actually make someone feel something!” So there’s more acceptance around people who are - or in the Western world - able to really spread their wings with what art means. What I noticed about a lot of the names of those places was that they would just be called “The Kitchen” or “The Gallery.” I like the idea of nonsensical things and not placing too much meaning on a name. I think a lot of our collaborators honestly are wanting to let it be what it is and who cares about the name!” said Bea.
“I knew that we’d probably want to use Te Reo, because we need people, especially Māori, to know that this is their space. Not that it’s only their space, but it’s theirs first because that’s what is equitable. Te Wā just means ‘the time’ or ‘the space’, depending on the context, but it simultaneously doesn’t mean anything. Te Wā–The Space is just a neutral, easy, and simple thing to say and we can fill it with meaning once we all come in here” Bea shared.
Partnered with Te Tumu Toi–The Arts Foundation and Creative New Zealand, Boosted is Aotearoa New Zealand’s only crowdfunding platform dedicated to artists and creatives. The Boost Ōtautahi campaign was announced in July 2024, with 11 opportunities for creative organisations in Ōtautahi to secure $5,000 of match funding towards a crowdfunding campaign in September of 2024, with Te Wā being one of the selected projects. The campaign saw Te Wā reaching their fundraising goal to cover fit-out cost, lease costs, and operating expenses. “I reckon what was surprising about the campaign was the support that we had from people, especially from those we didn’t know. I think that’s when you know the idea is good - when you don’t even know the people posting about it! We had 257 donors and we maybe knew 100 of them. That’s more than 100 people that we don’t know that believed in that idea” Bea said.
“It actually restores some of the jadedness that you have from applying for arts funding or from all the people that said no. When there was no backing, it felt like we were pitching this idea to people - people that we were hoping would have a buy in - and a lot of the responses were, “well, how’s that going to make money?” It’s just like, did you listen to what I said? Because this is not going to make money” Bea laughed. “Early on, we had a lot of discouraging things. Just saying an idea and people don’t get you. I’m not talking about any of our close friends, but people that we maybe would have liked to have on board that didn’t get our idea. Maybe it’s because they don’t get to experience our underground scene so they just don’t know what that means. Whereas we can visualise it. Boosted showed us that people do understand what we are talking about. People do, in some way, understand that this represents them, or that it represents something that they care about” Bea shared.
Support for the kaupapa was not exclusive to Ōtautahi, with donations coming in from overseas.
“It’s nice with that tautoko from overseas because it feels like there’s people that are thinking, “hey! That’s really cool for you guys. Go you!” Maybe it’s not going to benefit the overseas homies directly but they give a shit about the mahi for whatever reason. Also I think it’s healing for people that moved away from Ōtautahi because they had qualms here and found it difficult for whatever reason. But people who know Christchurch are recognising changes from overseas and are excited about it. What our underground scene seems to be saying right now is “we’re here! It’s not the past, it’s the present. We are awesome, we are all good, and we are doing cool things!”” Bea asserted.
With so much disheartening and disillusioning shit going on in the world, there’s an ever-present notion that makes you feel like you can’t do anything to better the mass of fucked up situations. The Te Wā campaign gave the community an opportunity to actually do something. “There were a few people thinking that this is the worst time to do this with everything going on, but I think it’s the opposite, because this is hope. Someone might have thought, “whatever, I’ve only got 20 bucks, I might as well give 5 bucks to this!” I think it’s being able to resist something through giving whatever you have to other people and now they have buy-in too. There is something I care about and now I am a part of the journey. I am so glad so many donated because now everyone is a part of it. They’re hooked in” Bea disclosed.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are indispensable to Te Wā. “We hold space for everyone and whatever’s going on. Shaun doesn’t know his whakapapa, but everyone else is whakapapa Māori. We had to make a deed for the trust, and it’s built into the deed that the board will always be tangata whenua as a way to safeguard. We want it to be for everyone, and a way to safeguard that is that Māori would have a say over how things function. So, that is the easy way for us to say, “whatever happens, there will always be a safeguard for this to come back to tangata whenua, and trust tangata whenua as keepers of the core idea.” That’s the paperwork for it. Māori values and Tiriti principles come first in governing our space, and whatever comes after that we’re hoping will come easily” Bea said.
“Making things equitable is complicated. How do you make something for everyone because if it’s said everyone can come, but there’s people that continue to be marginalised in the spaces for everyone, how do you flip that? I don’t think anyone knows the answer. I think it’s more about being conscious about that. I think it’s about bringing that up with people and saying, “I don’t know, but here’s the problem.” I think a lot of times we get it wrong. Things don’t need to be exclusively Māori, but they do need to have a consciousness about them that says, “we do prioritise Māori because of what’s happened in the past.” I don’t think that there’s any straightforward things to say regarding equity except for the fact that we will prioritise those groups.
I think it’s just allowing mistakes to happen, and being excited because the intentions are there. We’re hoping that everyone feels welcome and that we can do something good in the right way. If we make a mistake, we’ll go back and talk about it. The thing is: communication. The Treaty is about relationships. We always say romantic relationships are about communication, but I think all of our relationships to each other have the same rules. Can you put your differences aside for love basically?” Bea stated.
The role of art and collectives like Te Wā are paramount in shaping cultural landscapes. “Underground art, especially by marginalised people, is always at the forefront of creating futuristic ideology and moving forward consciously as humans,” Bea said. “Queer people, indigenous people, and people that have been oppressed understand the truth of being human that really pushes us forward as a society. The role of art is helping people to open their hearts and minds to forward thinking” Bea shared.
Te Wā aims to foster collaboration, seen routinely within the arts sector in Ōtautahi. An example of this collaboration was seen a couple of months ago at Cirque du Rave. “Artists were doing an exhibition at CoCA, so we put on a rave for them. On the same night, I was performing with Nathan Joe, doing poetry at the WORD festival. If you went to our WORD festival performance, you got a discount to go to the rave, and we plugged the rave at the end of the show. We also plugged the WORD event, and CoCA plugged the rave and WORD. CoCA, WORD Festival, and Emotional Capacity - which is the label that I run - all collaborated on a weekend where we could have all just had clashing events. So many people from Nathan and I’s show came to the gig and there was a bit of context for who we were as people because we were doing a more chill poetry reading. At Te Wā, we’re hoping that the right people will come in, co-work, and use this space for hui and artist talks. I think this is about having a neutral space where people from lots of different practices can come and just talk and hang out together. The first thing that needs to happen is everyone needs to know each other. That is why the WORD, CoCA, and Emotional Capacity thing happened, because Nathan knows Sarah, I know Sarah, and Sarah knows Steph. We use that to our advantage, rather than saying, “naw, there’s something on the same night as us!” It can either be something that pisses you off, or we can all work together and make it cool” Bea shared.
On the day that Te Wā became a part of the Boosted Ōtautahi campaign, RNZ published an article titled, “Is Christchurch now the coolest place in Aotearoa?” “I think that this city is going to become an arts capital in the next decade. I really believe in this city and I hope other people do see how awesome it is.
I think we’ve copped a lot of flak here. We’re not racist, we’re not homophobic, and we’re not transphobic. There’s some things here that are up those alleys, and that is what it is. But that’s not our identity, and I am sick of people saying it is. The positivity, joy, fun, silliness, and coolness of Ōtautahi is so liberating and so good to see. We just need more of it. We need to dream about the possibilities that come with that” Bea said.
Looking into the future for Te Wā, Bea explained what is in store for the collective. “The reason we set ourselves up to be a charity is to protect the longevity of what we do. People will be able to get paid wages, and artists will be paid fairly, but no one will be able to come in and say, “I’m the boss now! I’m going to go to Fiji off of the shows that happen in the next six months.” I don’t think there’s any clear direction, because it is about what our community wants. The vibe of the few of us collaborating at the moment is like, “hey, let’s try this!” Same as how making a piece of art should be; let’s do it and hopefully everyone loves it and it lives forever. But we also admit that we’re humans and things change, and we want to be relevant and think we’re making something relevant. If it’s not, then that’s OK too. This year is about testing out what actually works for our people, and then we can just go from there. We have more or less got a three year plan. This year will be messy as we find our feet. Then the next one is longevity, and then after that we will see if it worked” Bea disclosed.
As an established artist based in Ōtautahi, Bea had advice for emerging artists or collectives that are trying to make their mark in the local art scene in the 03. “Email us! Be and know yourself. Networking is about choosing people who you genuinely vibe with. Finding genuine connections is not necessarily about knowing everyone, nor is it about getting your face or name on every poster. It’s about enjoying the process of every stage of being an artist. If you’re new to everything and you don’t know how everything works, that’s cool. It’s time to explore! One day you won’t have that, and one day people will know you. Know that we [more established artists] have got your back and we don’t even know you yet! There are so many possibilities, so go with your fucking instincts about who to collaborate with or who to approach.” Bea shared.
If you want to stay up to date with all things Te Wā, sign up to their newsletter through their website. "For artists, DM us on Instagram or email us at admin@tewathespace.co.nz, especially tangata whenua, tangata moana, and queer peeps. Getting in contact with us like that would be good because I think we're going to keep it lowkey for a bit. But we do really want to know who is out there. For general peeps, the newsletter will be really good" Bea shared.
