Heretaunga Stories

Heretaunga Stories is about capturing artists responses to living in our diverse community.

Local artists need a safe, low risk outlet to explore ideas, maintain their practice and start creating new stories. With a focus on Heretaunga and what it means to live here, this series of performances will explore the idea of telling relevant and current stories which speak to our community and record who we are.

Heretaunga Stories is a partnership between Toitoi - Hawke's Bay Arts & Events Centre, Hastings District Libraries and Hastings City Art Gallery. In these post-Covid times we have recognised that our artists need support more than ever. This fund will go beyond our everyday business and allow us to fund, support and resource a broad range of projects to create new and exciting works about our place, our people and ourselves. This is a true exploration of our identity in Heretaunga using the arts as the storytelling vehicle.

This fund aims to provide 15 artists the opportunity to produce their Heretaunga Story. Using their artistic discipline or working in collaboration with other artists their story will weave itself into the fabric of Hawke's Bay. These stories will then become a series of performances. Each performance will allow three artists to share their work with the community, with the event running over five consecutive months.

Each organisation will approach Heretaunga-based artists in our community and assist them to produce in producing a 15 minute performance. The focus for each will be; performing arts (Toitoi), literature (Libraries) and visual art (Gallery). This allows each organisation to utilise their area of expertise and work closely with artists to develop their stories. This formula will shape each performance, giving our community a broad range of experiences. 

Right now our stories are more important than ever. Arts and culture enrich our lives and help create a vibrant, inclusive and resilient community. This project will add depth to the rich tapestry of our district and give us opportunities to learn more about ourselves and our community, to tell our stories and share our experiences. It will also offer us an escape from the harder realities of life - which is needed now more than ever in our current post-pandemic world.

Heretaunga is our place, it's now time to empower our artists.