Harewood School – Te Kura o Tāwera Sculpture Project
In November 2011, I was invited to work with the children of Room 7 at Harewood Primary School — now known as Te Kura o Tāwera — to create a feature sculpture for their garden. Their teacher explained that the children had all helped raise the money for it themselves — and that this was going to be something very special to them.
I loved the idea immediately. Working with a whole class of children on a single sculpture was something different from the smaller carving workshops I'd run before, and I couldn't wait to get started.
The Design
I spent an afternoon with the children teaching them how to approach designing a sculpture — thinking about the weight distribution of the stone, where the natural weaknesses are, and how to build from a solid base. I also shared some of my own work with them and talked about what inspires me as an artist.
Within a few days the final design was chosen: three Koru, each with its own meaning. The largest represents the guardian or parent. The second represents the teacher. And the small Koru at the front represents every child who attends Harewood School. The children also embraced the Koru as a symbol significant to Māori culture and how it has become part of New Zealand identity.
The Carving
Once the stone was delivered, the children got to work in groups of two or three at a time. For many of them it was the first time they'd ever used a saw or chisel — and the excitement in the room was something else. We covered safety first: goggles on at all times, how to hold the tools correctly, how to read the stone.
Most of the time they came in for one or two afternoons a week. It didn't take long for the sculpture to take shape, and before long it was the talk of the school. Teachers from other classrooms started bringing their students in to watch the progress. And after a while, the Room 7 children were answering all the questions themselves — explaining the design, the meaning of the Koru, and how they'd carved it.
The Result
By the end of the project, the children were incredibly proud of what they'd created — and rightly so. They'd raised the money, helped design the sculpture, done the carving themselves, and learned new skills along the way. The three Koru now stand in the school garden as a lasting reminder of what Room 7 achieved together.
