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Creative Practice, Northland (2026)

03/04/2026

Reading ahead of my first Exec MBA paper this year, I realised I’ve been working with complexity for years. I was using a language for it, one grounded in relationships and creative practice.

Through my MFA research, grounded in Fluxus, relational aesthetics, and social practice, I’ve been operating in systems where:

outcomes can’t be predicted

participation is distributed
meaning emerges through interaction
uncertainty is something to hold, not resolve

During the EMBA, I began to recognise these patterns in frameworks like Cynefin and Complexity Leadership Theory.

Event scores → enabling constraints
Participation → distributed leadership
Relational process → adaptive systems

This wasn’t about applying management theory to art. It was recognising that my creative practice already maps onto complexity leadership.

The shift for me has been clear:

From decision-maker
to condition-setter
to steward of systems in motion

Grateful to my lecturers for helping me see and articulate this, Chris Gallavin, Stephen Kelly, and Dave Snowden for the Cynefin framework.

Here's a link to my substack where I deep dive into a project from my MFA at Whitecliffe College in 2019 - 2020.

ps. we need more creatives in leadership and governance!

https://mycreativepractice.substack.com/p/practising-complexity

02/11/2025

Honoured that my work 'Keep Care: If birds can see blue' was selected as a finalist in the Walker & Hall Waiheke Art Award 2025, over on Waiheke Island.

Out of 179 entries from across Aotearoa New Zealand, 35 works were selected for exhibition. This year’s selector and judge is Julia Waite, Curator of New Zealand Art at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

Keep Care explores mending as repair and disruption. Using fallen birds’ nests and visible mending techniques, the work considers how beauty, strength, and care can coexist with loss, and asks us to reflect on the unintended consequences of trying to repair what may be beyond control.

Congratulations to all the other finalists and winners!

https://www.waihekeartgallery.org.nz/shop/exhibition-artwork/keep-care-if-birds-can-see-blue/

20/10/2025

Last week Museums Aotearoa surprised me with a message saying I’d been their most engaged member for the year and offered a book voucher to celebrate ~ so lovely!

I chose one on Eva Hesse, an artist whose work has always resonated with me, innovative, sensual, and sculptural, yet she also struggled with self-doubt.

It all arrived in the same week I marked one year at the Hundertwasser Art Centre with Wairau Māori Art Gallery. A year full of building, connecting, and reimagining what engagement and care can look like in a contemporary arts organisation.

In the past twelve months I’ve:
– Developed our first Employee Value Proposition, including a new paid Wellbeing Day for staff
– Written our first Fundraising Strategy and built a grants database from the ground up
– Secured new partnerships and hosted our first Business After 5 event, helping bring the Sustainable Business Network into Northland
– Refreshed our Friends & Membership programme and grown our network of supporters
– Reconnected with our original fundraising community and national peers

It’s been a year of steady groundwork. The kind of work that happens behind the scenes but sets up everything that’s to come.

Engaging stakeholders and advocating for arts and culture has never been more challenging, but I’m deeply motivated by the belief that arts and culture are central to a life well lived. Many of us - like the team at Museums Aotearoa - are playing the long game and working hard to keep creativity visible and valued.

Alongside this, I’ve started an Executive MBA with Massey University, exploring how mana-enhancing leadership, ecological thinking, and strategic practice can strengthen Aotearoa — making real impact in people’s lives and being good stewards of this beautiful place.

Big thank you to the team at Museums Aotearoa!

There’s so much more to come, and I’m excited for what’s next. 💛

23/09/2025

Another awesome weekend with brilliant leaders - emerging and established.

Such a fun and engaging team to work with, be challenged by and learn alongside.

Big ngā mihi nui to Madelize Bekker, Leadership and People is my favourite paper. Great to hear from our guests Chris Wyborn and Brent Westein, really valuable insights and connections to leadership practice.

Ngā mihi to my fab team, Lisa Maya, Kelly Feng MNZM, and Joshua Vitali. We presented on Satya Nadella’s Leadership at Microsoft, we are all interested in leadership with empathy.

At the heart of Nadella's leadership was a commitment to people first and to leading with empathy.

We discussed key insights that can form a solid foundation for cultural shift in diverse organisations:

A Deep Connection to Purpose

Leading with Empathy

Empathy, “the ability to understand and share the feelings of others”

Embedding a Growth Mindset

We went on to share insights into what this looks like and how we can make practical application of these principles in workplaces and communities.

26/05/2025

So excited to have been invited to be part of this thoughtful project.
All are welcome to join us at the opening next Friday 5 - 7pm, 6th June.

Come on down after work, say hello and then head on up to Hangar Art and Framing for their opening, make it a night of art and friends!

Ecologies
Opening 5-7pm, Friday 6 June 2025
The Shutter Room Gallery, 7 Rust Ave, Whangārei

Curated by Marcel Allen and featuring work by Alan Squires, Ashleigh Zimmerman, Ellen Smith, Megan White, Angela Rowe, Lisa Clunie and Marcel Allen. Thanks to Creative Communities WDC.

Artist Talks 11am, Saturday 7 June 2025

Workshop 10am-2pm, Saturday 14 June 2025

Exhibition 6 June - 26 July 2025

Ecologies brings together a collection of Northland artists whose work explores different local environments and the ways in which we interact and relate to them.
Ecologies is a provocation. It looks to inspire personal and/or collective action. Through reflection on our own understanding of what is meant by ecologies and how we fit into our own environments it will illuminate what is meant by kaitiakitanga and taking care of the natural and man made environments and the organisms that inhabit them.

.smith.photographer .nz Whangarei ShutterRoom Whangarei District Council .northland

07/04/2025

Engage, Motivate, and Persuade, EMBA weekend number two, done and dusted.

Lots of fun and stepping up, true to Fashion Runway styles, we 'Made it work!'

Big thank you to my team, Oliver Johnson and Rufat Bunyat! Thank you Simon Shen CA for the photos 💪

Our first day consisted of individual presentations on a topic of our choice. My presentation, Keep Care, discussed bringing together my creative practice and leadership practice.

Keep Care is my foundation of relational and mana enhancing leadership, and I shared my research question:

How does Keep Care translate into a practice of leadership and relationship building?

I pitched a conversation, ending with; What does Keep Care look like in your leadership spaces?

University

24/03/2025

Kia ora koutou freinds!

My work is continuing in the Arts and Learning space at .northland where we are collaborating with Dr Maggie Buxton of @ to share knowledge and skills for creatives.

AI is everywhere now, and many people use it, we're about understanding the risks, ethics and what we need to know if we choose to use it.

If you are a Northland based creative, funder, or interested to learn more, join us for a FREE session, funded by Foundation North, supported by Creative Northland.

Register for this FREE 1hr Online Seminar - 8th April, 6pm - 7:30pm

This is a Funding 101 Session designed to bring you up to date with current funding models and opportunities as well as practical guidance on how you might approach seeking funding.

We'll explore how AI can help with your efforts at each stage and discuss potential risks, integrity issues, transparency, and safeguards.

Like our other informative Online Sessions, there will be a presentation to introduce ideas and information followed by questions and discussion.

Maggie is Director of AwhiWorld, a local/global transdisciplinary lab who have delivered AI training across Northland to a diverse range of creatives as part of their Strange Intelligences Project.

Angela Rowe is experienced in Arts and NFP Fundraising and has had success with major arts funding bodies. She offers practical feedback as a Creative Northland Creative Advisor.

Creative Northland is pleased to offer this session in partnership with AwhiWorld thanks to funding from Foundation North.

Please register by completing the form below.

https://forms.gle/NEwsYKoD8MxiKzQ3A

You will receive your link within 24 hours of the session

22/03/2025

A big part of my work is supporting better systems and support in our sector, that's a massive shift! So in the meantime, at .northland we will do what we can to support wellbeing of creatives.

This is an opportunity to tune in for some positive approaches to better wellbeing.

Understanding Wellbeing & Managing Anxiety as a Creative with Jaki GT
26th March 5.30 - 7.30pm & 7th April 11-1pm- Online Google Meet, link sent the day before.

Accessibility: FREE

To register, send me an email here: [email protected]

Are you a hobby artist or looking to turn your creativity into a career? Struggling to balance creativity, life, and well-being? Feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or battling creative burnout?"

Learn how to nurture your creative flow while taking care of your mental wellbeing. Transform your artistic passion into a sustainable practice—without the stress! Creativity thrives when wellbeing is prioritized—let's explore how!

Make a cup of tea or hot chocolate and listen in on a session about well-being for creatives.

Register by email to Angela: [email protected]
Welcome to attend both or just one workshop please let us know your preference when registering.

Find out more about Jaki here: https://jakigt.com/

01/03/2025

International Women's Day is almost here!

To recognise it is here, yet again, and there is still so much work to do, I'm fundraising towards my EMBA at Massey University .

My Creative Practice and my MFA research through College centred around an ethics of care; for people and our environment. The next step is to bring an ecological approach to governance and leadership especially, as well as change management that sustains and supports people in place.

My work has enabled artists and creatives to extend themselves and their practices, to connect and form new communities. I've spent my hard won funding not just on supporting my work, but I've invested artists and makers themselves. Paying people decent wages to do what they love and serve our communities!

As many people find, the arts and culture struggles to really support it's community financially, and my study is self funded. Study for the first year of my EMBA at Massey is around $26,000, each course module is $3,200.

So, in order to reach my goals, I'm selling my work!

I'm selling work from my Victory Book for Girls project, which features artists and creatives I admire and were not covered in my High School Art education... So, Yoko Ono, Eva Hesse, Dora Maar, Lee Miller, Freda Kahlo, Sylvia Plath, Hannah Höch and more!

I'm also selling works from my Stitched Selfies project, beginning in Lockdown, these works are hand stitched self portraits. Many of which have made art awards, such as Changing Threads, the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award, Craig's Aspiring Art Prize, and this year, the Cleveland Art Award.

The works sell for $500 - $2000, you can chose which EMBA you want to support;

Business Law
Managing Financial Decisions
Leadership and People
Marketing
Contemporary Strategy
Operations and Logistics
Global Leadership
Strategic Management
Governance and Responsibility
Global Leadership

I'll give you a big thank you and share my research, as well as send you the work you purchase!

Send me an email or a DM. Over the next few days I'll be sharing the works available, if you have seen one I've made, also just reach out.

If you know me, you know I work hard, and I'll get this EMBA done !

01/03/2025

Super super excited that Fabric-a-brac is coming to Whangārei!

This post is for all my textile makers out there.

I'll be away on an EMBA weekend (sob) so I have big FOMO already. Sign up to destash or shop for some new material for your making.

More deets:

Fabric-a-Brac is a market that is about ‘things to make things’ focusing on fabric and sewing related items, for all those that love to craft, sew, quilt, knit, make things and generally like being creative. There are always vintage treasures and bargains to be had! No finished goods are sold. Fabric-a-Brac is held in 10 locations nationally but is new to Whangarei & Northland. Stallholders pay a fee for the stall which goes to Hospice, but any profits they make they keep. Applications are open for stallholders.

- Saturday April 4, 2025
- 10am-1pm
- Te Ora Hou, 104 Corks Road, Tikipunga, Whangarei

Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/8198556276936410

Stall holder forms: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSciCvMbWdPDJZhhMXaDNgWPvRdpIjoD4zp9tSzytWPN5OA9ig/viewform

19/02/2025

Stoked to share that I’ve started my Executive Master of Business Administration at University!

I'm most excited to bring my experience in the Arts and Culture Sector and all I have learned from working in NFP, community grassroots spaces.

In 2024 I had to think hard about how to create a more sustainable life for my family and I, it was apparent that there's just so few impactful (and well paying jobs) in the arts to justify a PHD to expand my creative Social Practice, so I am doing the next best thing.

I'm really excited to deep dive into an ecological approach to governance and leadership especially, as well as change management that sustains and supports, within an ethics of care; for people and our environment.

I've meet some amazing people already, and can't wait to get into the work!

I'll still be doing my creative mahi, and you can expect a level up in skills and support in my work with artists, creatives and organisations.

Creative Practice

03/04/2026

02/11/2025

20/10/2025

23/09/2025

26/05/2025

07/04/2025

24/03/2025

22/03/2025

01/03/2025

01/03/2025

19/02/2025

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