Description:

This concept is a physically interactive outdoor floor mat encompassing mātauranga surrounding Māramataka. It was created to enable relationship-building between parents and children through physical engagement with Māori materials. Most importantly, it aims to encourage tamariki to embrace their Māoritanga so they can grow up with an indigenously-grounded worldview and harness the knowledge that is their birthright. The mātauranga within Māramataka helps us understand the importance of kaitiakitanga, prioritising our hauora and whanau relationships, and works as an enabling educational tool.

Western education structures create restrictive barriers that prevent tamariki from thinking outside of the box, leading to binaries of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and a limited view of what kinds of knowledge are valid, and are often delivered in a linear English format. This design allows us to rethink what we see as education and how to deliver it, expanding our horizons on how mātauranga can play an important role in our tamariki learning. It aims to break the intergenerational chains of colonisation, assisting our whanau in progressing towards indigenisation and strengthening one's Māoritanga.

‘Ko te kete aronui o marama’ aims to respond to the needs of Indigenous Māori learners. It is created to enable curiosity, imagination and explorative thinking. It breaks all the confinements of what we see as education and combines it with play, making the process and idea of education associated with joy. It responds to the idea that learning shouldn’t be done in isolation but instead as whanau-centric, that learning, play and whanau time can be valued harmoniously. This concept explores functionality in multiple aspects, including the lift-up tab components harnessing the physical phase of the moon, te reo names for the day's Mārama phase and, on the base of the mat, a visual design of the harvesting practice for the day. The differing lengths of koru symbolise our high, medium and low energy states, showing when it's important to focus on your own and your whanau hauora. The transformation into this shape reinforces the concept's name, as its change in shape and function showcases the mātauranga within the mat regarding Māramataka being kept safe in te kete aronui, creating a culturally safe kete of knowledge for tamariki to absorb.
The intended material reference the knowledge systems within it. Muka is a very important material within Te Ao Māori. The word whenua means both the land we stand on and the placenta of a pēpē. Muka cord is used to tie off pepi’s umbilical cord, the physical connection between māmā and pēpē. Regarding the land, whenua refers to our connection to Papatuanuku and how she provides us with the resources needed to thrive. In regards to this design, the choice of muka cord on both the inner and outer edge is a purposeful one. The outer represents the connection to the land we live upon, and the inner represents the connection between tamariki, whanau and whakapapa.