This film relies on footage of our craft captured during those last few days before the rāhui. We, the friends and craft practitioners I work with, realised that our time together (even at a 2 metre distance) was limited and so we filmed. Hilary Jean Tapper & her husband Kuva Zakheim leapt into action and within an hour or two they’d set up the camera at our workshop at The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora in Ōtautahi Christchurch, to document as much of our work as possible. The idea was that this would be useful in transitioning our resourceful craft workshop programme online, and this is still unfolding now.

When Hilary, Kuva, Gemma Stratton, Greg Quinn and I met on those days it was obvious we were all finding our way through some strange fog, a new mixture of fear, shock and bamboozlement - this all manifested in the weirdness of not being able to hug each other. Swaddled with scarves over our mouths most of the time, we choreographed the filming process to enable us to stay awkwardly distant from each other.

Then we said goodbye. Gemma had come prepared and gave us each a box full of homemade preserves, candles, tī kōuka brushes she’d made, grapes and most wonderfully a photo of her son for us to cherish in his absence.

That night I came home and cried. I felt sadness not just for having to say the strangest of farewells to those who are important to me and to our beloved public workshop, but for the slow realisation that I had to let go of what I’d become used to as the known. Certainty, what a beguiling and insidious mistruth. In a painful reluctant manner it was only just beginning to dawn on me that we had just lost all of our revenue-generating work and the momentum it took to create this.  Though a large part of me couldn’t attend to this loss at all, knowing it was and is a minor detail in the scheme of what’s unfolding for many others.

Now 3 weeks on, things are still sinking in at a sluggish rate but the path forward is a fraction clearer. Though maybe a fraction is a little generous. The fog of bamboozlement persists but craft is rising slowly up through it providing structure, stillness and purpose. Craft anchors me to the here and now, and allows me some non-specific hope in the unknown. 

As of last week we started the Making Together sessions where people join live online craft sessions simply to gather together and work side-by-side. The joy of people coming together from across Aotearoa, Australia & the USA is heart-melting and a wonderful reminder of what we share.

The need for resourceful craft, to create what we need from what we have around us and inside us, seems only stronger these days.

Craft connects us to so much and will continue to, I am certain of little else.