Toiora, Hauora is a Kaupapa Māori arts-based collaboration to theorise the pedagogy of Māori creative practices that support flourishing Māori whānau wellbeing. This innovative research centres Māori arts-based practice ‘as teacher’, bringing together three established Māori arts scholar-practitioners to expand the currently under-researched field of Māori pedagogies, and to highlight the critical role of Māori arts practice and pedagogy to grow well and flourishing Māori futures.
We seek to develop the pedagogical theory of three embodied art forms - whatu, raranga and kapahaka - often viewed simply as artefact or cultural performance, to make an important contribution to Māori pedagogies for wellbeing, Māori and Indigenous arts and education scholarship, and broader Kaupapa Māori goals of enabling flourishing Māori wellbeing through our own Māori arts-based research lens.
This Kaupapa Māori scoping project will develop and test theory around the pedagogy of each modality within our own arts-practice communities. The aim is to promote a wider range of Kaupapa Māori practices that enable whānau wellbeing through our arts which are inextricably bound to our reo, tikanga and mātauranga Māori. A theory of Māori arts pedagogy explored in this scoping project will support a funding application to scale this work, intertwining our established practice with ‘new’ theory to create a Māori arts pedagogy of praxis across the education, arts and hauora sectors.