Imagine
Over coffee one afternoon, I was chatting with a good friend who happened to work at Te Awahou Nieuwe Stroom in Foxton about how much I had drifted away from “just creating.” For years I have been designing to briefs and to deadlines and I had found myself longing to make something just for me, for fun, for play, for no reason at all.
My friend mentioned she was looking for a new exhibition idea for over the summer and said, almost as a slip-of-the-tongue that we needed to “Imaginate something”.
That was it! I loved it immediately. That word, half “imagine,” half “create,” full of possibility, felt like everything I wanted, and a great excuse to create. A reminder that creativity doesn’t always need a plan, a pitch, or even conviction. It just needs a bit of wild-hearted permission.
From that moment, the seed was planted. We decided to build a space for that. A space where art didn’t have to be polished or gallery-ready, it just needed to make people smile.
So we put out a quick call out for Expressions of Interest through social media. Mixed media, sculpture, digital art, children’s art, experimental pieces, all welcome. No rules. Just you and your imagination.
As the submissions came in, I felt a quiet excitement. Locals. Part-time dabblers. First-time creators. People who just needed the excuse to create, like me.
Spark
When the responses rolled in, I felt a bit of a spark. I started to see Imaginate not just as an art show, but as a gentle disruption, a soft invitation to the creative soul of our local and regional community to come together and celebrate collective creativity and diversity.
Imaginate wasn’t going to be about perfection. It was about permission, to play, to experiment, to make a mess, to make a gift, to try a medium you’ve never touched, to celebrate colour, shape, texture, light even if it means nothing. A wee spark popped up, what if we did a live art paint wall, something that grew with the time the exhibition went on? What if people came back to see something continue to develop?
I imagined visitors, a kid, a parent, a grandparent walking into the gallery and feeling a flicker of recognition, “I could do this.” People who never thought of themselves as “artists.” This sparked the concept of a series of workshops to accompany the exhibition.
For the wider artistic community, this was a gentle call, a reminder that art doesn’t always need to be serious or high concept. Sometimes, messy is beautiful. And sometimes, joy doesn’t need a reason.
Create
Then came the hard part: doing it.
I’ll admit — I underestimated just how much admin would be involved. Collating submissions. Tracking them. Organising installation day fortnight. Planning a workshop programme, booking times, allocating spaces, gathering materials, re-gathering them when a piece changed, adjusting layouts, communicating with artists, liaising with staff, organising marketing, designing marketing...
Another good friend of mine saved my sanity with their spreadsheet savviness. Without their help, I may have lost my marbles. Their ability to create tabs on every submission, every workshop booking, every wall and floor space was my go-to doc.
I made my own artwork. Just because. No brief. No agenda. No pressure. Just the joy of making something, for the sake of making. Letting my mind take me wherever it wanted to go.
I met with lots of artists (28 in total are involved in Imaginate), we chatted and some themes became quite evident. Some told me they didn’t think their work belonged in a gallery, they were “just” hobbyists. That quiet vulnerability, that unspoken doubt made me more determined to transform the gallery space into something that said: “Yes. You belong here.” Many of the artists I spoke to felt a bit more confident. I saw shy people beginning to stand taller. I saw people’s faces light up when I told them that their work belonged and deserved to be celebrated.
Imaginate: An Exhibition
Imaginate opened at Te Awahou Nieuwe Stroom in Foxton on 15 November 2025, and runs all summer through to 20 February 2026.
Te Awahou Nieuwe Stroom is no ordinary gallery. It’s an award-winning multicultural community and visitor hub that is home to a Māori heritage museum, a Dutch-community museum, a library, community rooms, and a gallery space. Over the years, it has become a place where heritage, culture, and community meet, mingle, and evolve. A place for community.
Imaginate brought something fresh to the gallery walls. A chance for people from our district and wider regions who don’t usually see themselves as artists to walk in, and maybe see themselves reflected back.
One of the most heart-warming exhibits is a collaborative piece created by Warwick Smith and by kids from a local Foxton school. It’s playful, interactive and something you can touch, walk around, create with. The kids met with Warwick to watch the work be put together during the installation period and they beamed with pride. So many smiles.
Then there has been the support from within the local art community. Albie McCarthy, internationally renowned multi-media artist was there every day during the install period, helping me to curate, telling me stories of other work he’s done, places he’s been and things he has learnt. Albie’s multi-media installation for Imaginate is so stunning and playful. His input felt like the heartbeat of Imaginate. His work, and his ability to mentor and support, grounded the exhibition in deeper values: whakapapa, guardianship, care, and play.
For me personally, Imaginate was also a chance to go back to why I fell in love with art and design in the first place. Creating in general is a beautiful process of bringing something into being, this time just because I could.
Want to Imaginate?
If you see this and think: I’d love to give it a go, you can! The gallery space has a few activities for people to have a go at being creative during opening hours. There is a community art wall for people to add their creations too.
The workshop programme over this summer offers introductions to stone carving, pottery painting, photography, air dry clay creations… some workshops have a fee, others for a koha.
There is something for everyone.
Let’s get imaginating.
Look for the Imaginate events on Facebook or at teawahou.com/Whats-On
