Passion for Māori co-design prompts inaugural Tikanga Māori Co-Design Wananga
For immediate release
Wednesday 23rd November 2016
Tomorrow will bring together a group of Māori co-design enthusiasts who work at the coal face of participatory research
within their iwi, hapū and whanau. Toi Tangata and Nga Aho have actively supported and championed the use of co-design
to drive mātauranga Māori approaches to reduce, remove and eliminate negative health outcomes for Māori.
The inaugural Tikanga Māori Co-Design Wananga, to be held at 12pm on Thursday 24 November 2016 at Auckland’s Unitec
Institute of Technology, Te Noho Kotahitanga Marae, is to be an exciting, multidisciplinary collaboration between
committed Māori co-design practitioners, to connect, share, and learn about the practice of Māori-led co-design. The hui
will include a group of researchers and practitioners from multiple fields encompassing a wide range of issues that
emerge around cooperative design.
“This is a great opportunity to acknowledge a Māori approach from the start, rather than coming back to it later. As
Māori, we have intrinsically operated in this way and this hui is the platform to share it with others,” say Crystal
Pekepo, community research and co-design specialist for Toi Tangata.
Participation and co-creation have become essential features of design and research in many public-sector areas.
Embracing an era of participation by design prompts critical questions around the goals and practices of involving
people in diverse aspects of developing, redesigning and using co-design to inform service delivery practice.
The distribution and promise of co-design cuts across emerging social health challenges at various levels which
highlights the importance of identifying, acknowledging and nurturing a Māori co-design framework that can drive and
promulgate future Māori work streams related to broader determinants of health and well-being. These issues call for new
perspectives on the values, characteristics, politics, and future forms of co-design and encourage critical and
constructive reflections about co-design as a past, present and future.
Toi Tangata is a national Māori public health agency which focuses on developing and delivering positive health
initiatives to accelerate health outcomes for Māori. They are a team of specialists dedicated to health approaches
informed by mātauranga Māori.
Nga Aho is a national network of Māori design professionals who come together to support each other to better serve the
design aspirations of Māori communities.
ENDS