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Mātātupu Mātauranga: Future Thinkers

Join us for a day of tours, workshops, and talks by rangatahi, for rangatahi. This event celebrates young people and their role as the future kaitiaki of te taiao.

When | Āhea

Sat 31 Oct 2026, 10am–2pm

Where | Ki hea

Hīnātore, Signs of a Nation, Slow Burn, Rongomaraeroa, Bush City, Level 4 and outside

Accessibility

NZSL facilitated group: 11am–2pm
email LPTeam@tepapa.govt.nz to register

Mātātupu Mātauranga: Future Thinkers celebrates rangatahi (15–24yo) and their unique perspective on the world. Get involved with te taiao-related creative workshops, tours, and activities, and then round out the day with a wānanga on how rangatahi envision a climate-focused future.

Painting the Future

10.00am–1.00pm, The Promenade
Dream up a sustainable future – bring it to life through painting and drawing. Work collaboratively with others to create a collaged vision of a climate-focused future.

Print Planting

10.00am–1.00pm, Signs of a Nation 
Join illustrator Tayla Hartemink (Tūhoe, Te Arawa) to learn about stamp printing and plants growing in your backyard. Bring something from home to stamp or get creative on paper and fabric.

Fa‘atupu: Giving new life to old words 

10:30–12.00pm, Hīnātore (registration required)
Join Mauatua Fa‘ara-Reynolds for this writing workshop inspired by the propagation of the aute plants across the Pacific. Participants are invited to bring excerpts of their own writing, or words from others, and use them as seeds for generating new work.

Registrations required for this session: book via Humanitix.

Beyond Be-leaf: Plant Stories in Bush City

10.30–11.30am and 12.00–1.00pm, Bush City Kiosk
What can plants teach us? What stories lie beyond the leaf? Join Curator Botany Leon Perrie for a tour of Bush City and work together to identify plants that are growing in our backyard during kōanga.

Holding Light: Slow Looking Tour

10.30–11.30am, 12.00–1.00pm, Slow Burn | Ahi Tāmau
Join slow looking tauira in a tour of Slow Burn | Ahi Tāmau – venture deep into photographic works made by rangatahi artists to discover how light illuminates stories.

Climate Wānanga

1.00–2.00pm, Rongomaraeroa, the marae (NZSL interpreted)
Indigenous rangatahi are the rākau holding up the sky. This wānanga brings together young leaders in climate education and environmental justice to share how their work brings us closer to a climate-focused future.  Speakers include Bethany Mataiti, Pacific Climate Warrior, Orini Rokx-Taratu, Climate Educator, and Ngawaierua and Kahuti, Taraika Tours.

Bethany Mataiti is a Cook Islands Māori and papa‘ā woman from Aitutaki. She was born and raised in Tokoroa and Ōtautahi and is also connected to Taranaki. Living in Pōneke for the last 12 years, Bethany is a māmā, a climate warrior, board chair, and public sector worker. Bethany is a champion of the Aotearoa campaign calling for a fossil fuel treaty and believes that the world can learn from Indigenous leadership happening in Aotearoa and the wider Pacific.

Orini Rokx-Taratu (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Maniapoto). Raised in Tokomaru Bay, Orini is a proud pā kid. At 18, during her first year of teacher training, Orini experienced Cyclone Gabrielle and witnessed the devastation and isolation faced by Māori communities across Te Tairāwhiti. Her experience contributing to a research project with Te Weu Tairāwhiti examining extreme weather impacts on hauora ignited a passion for embedding climate education in her teaching. Now she voluntarily coordinates climate education kaupapa through Future Unity in Porirua and has participated in an Indigenous knowledge exchange to Chile and Rapa Nui. Most recently, she represented Aotearoa at the Pre-Cop31 Australia-Pacific Youth Climate Dialogue in Nadi, Fiji. Now qualified, Orini is working at Education NZ Manapou ki te Ao as a Māori advisor.

Mauatua Fa‘ara-Reynolds (they/them) is a Mā‘ohi-Norf‘k writer and tapa-maker. They have an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, where they received the Letteri Family Prize for Creative Non-Fiction. More recently, they were the Mana Moana Resident at CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image. With a background in student journalism, teaching, and art criticism, Mauatua’s mahi is centred around mobilising customary modes of storytelling to confront colonial violences and generate possibilities for healing and reclamation.

Leon Perrie is Curator Botany at Te Papa and was the lead science curator for Te Papa’s long-term exhibition Te Taiao Nature. He specialises in plant taxonomy and the collection and curation of plant specimens. His research focuses on the naming and relationships of Pacific ferns, and he has begun working on taramea speargrasses. His collecting emphasises mosses, liverworts, and weeds. Leon coauthored the Identification Guide to the Ferns and Lycophytes of Aotearoa New Zealand, which was based on the Ferns and Lycophytes series of the online Flora of New Zealand.”

Illustration by Te Papa

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