Charmaine Bailie & Holli McEntegart

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Ngakinga, iteration 4 of The Inhabit Project, is a participatory social sculpture which will be grown over a one year time period. The community will be invited to create and grow alongside us at Papa ki Awataha, while we will host creative making spaces, workshops and performance. Ngakinga is a living laboratory for taiao, creativity and natural dyeing practices; an ongoing public art project nurturing interconnectedness and care. We, Charmaine Bailie (Te Uri o Hau – Ngati Whatua ki Kaipara)and Holli McEntegart, are excited to be working with a 200 sq meter piece of land at Papa ki Awataha, the home of the puna that feeds Te Awataha. The land is bare, raw, hard and cracked, waiting to be nurtured back to its full potential. We will inhabit here, nourishing the whenua intentionally along its journey to good health. Workshop details and additional days will be announced on instagram, on the website and on the notice board at Ngakinga as it unfolds.

As a public sculpture garden, this carefully cultivated space will grow plants and flowers specifically selected for their natural dyeing properties to create textile arts. By combining a variety of native and introduced species, the garden's mission is honoring the Indigenous knowledge that forms the foundation of natural dyeing practices and ecological regeneration. We acknowledge that the garden stands at Papa ki Awataha, the source of the Awataha Stream which has been undergoing a regeneration by the Kaipatiki Project as part of the Te Ara Awataha is a 1.5km greenway corridor in the heart of Northcote. Connecting the town centre, schools and homes and bringing back its mauri. We are inviting folks to join us in building community around this land. To help us care for it softly and radically, with creativity and interconnectedness. Across four seasons. It will be a place to share personal stories and collective reflection with our feet in the soil and our faces in the flowers. A place to make art with natural dye plants through a lens of decolonisation and ecosystem regeneration, addressing the importance of sustainable practices and connection to the whenua while the Northcote town center is under redevelopment. The Inhabit Project is an ongoing public art project exploring traditions of care-work within communities in Aotearoa. Established in 2021, it enacts a site of community care and connection at the intersection of birth and reproductive justice, public art and social practice.