This Assessment Activity could be completed concurrently with other Visual Arts Achievement Standards.

Best practice would see each task for this Assessment Activity followed up by a separate task that would allow students to create evidence towards Achievement Standard 91913 and Achievement Standard 91914.

Preparation

Before engaging students with this Assessment Activity, you will need to explore Visual Arts processes, materials, and techniques in class. Teachers will need to structure their programme so that students have engaged with established practice and key concepts before they start any assessment components. This could include learning techniques for recording visual information and representing their ideas in a visual diary.

For this Assessment Activity, students will need to have an understanding of photographic conventions and a range of tactile recording techniques such as pencil, charcoal, ink, frottage, and cyanotype.

Key concepts for students to engage with include personal relationships between people and the land. They will need to have an understanding of Māori concepts connected to the whenua. Suggested concepts include:

• kaitiakitanga
• tangata whenuatanga
• tūrangawaewae
• mana motuhake.

You should discuss these concepts with your students before they start the Assessment Activity, and at each stage of the activity. Examples of questions you could ask your students include:

• What does kaitiakaitanga mean when you visit a significant site?
• What is your response to the land?
• What does kaitiakitanga mean for you in relation to a place/site you have chosen that is significant to you?

In this Assessment Activity, students will begin with a visit to a local site that is of historical and cultural significance to Māori, in your community or school. This could be located offsite such as a national park, awa, maunga, historical battle site, community building, or within or connected to your school (such as school marae). The place may be offsite such as a national park, within the community, within or connected to your school, such as school marae.

Your students will need to investigate the history and culture of the Māori site they will visit, including why it is significant to your community or school.

You and your students will need to discuss concepts relating to the whenua before visiting any sites. This should include discussions about tikanga and cultural considerations when visiting a historically significant site.

This is a good opportunity for schools to engage with local iwi, organisations, kaumātua, experts, city councils, museums, and knowledge holders.

Considerations

The emphasis of the assessment is to explore features of a local historic Māori site and make connections to a site of personal significance to the student. You will need to guide students to choose a site with features that they will be able to link to the Māori site that they have visited. These links could be visual, structural, functional, or even related to location or personal experiences.

Cultural safety is vital when working within te ao Māori. For this assessment it is important to understand origins, placements, and reproduction of visual elements such as kōwhaiwhai and tāniko patterns. This includes the placement of a pattern on an object.

You and your students may need to discuss examples of where visual connections may be found across Māori and non-Māori cultures.

Step 1: Class trip

You will need to follow your school’s guidelines for organising a field trip with appropriate permissions and safety measures. If this is not possible, you will need to change the student activity and supply images for students to work from. Alternatively, you could organise a virtual trip.

Your students will need to capture visual and cultural information from the site using the techniques you have explored in class, including photography.

Your students could also gather objects such as leaves and shells to record using drawings, notes, rubbings (frottage), or any other appropriate methods. Make sure that they know not to destroy anything, and to return them all before you leave.

If possible, students can make a cyanotype on the site visit.

Note that the purpose of using a range of photographic conventions in this assessment is for recording visual and contextual information from the chosen site. Students should avoid simply photographing examples of listed conventions that do NOT relate to the site or do NOT provide visual or contextual information.

Depending on the site that you visit, it may not be appropriate to photograph material that is culturally significant. If you are unsure, consult with local iwi or conduct some background research so that you can advise your students appropriately.

Step 2: Personal place investigation

Individually, students will visit a site that is of significance to them such as their church, sporting location, a space of culture, or another community or school site. Students will need to communicate what they know and think about both sites, the connections that they find between them, and how this shapes who they are as people and their ahurea tuakiri. Their ideas and opinions about the connections between different peoples, cultures, and values are essential to success in this assessment.

You will need to guide students on their choice of site, and to identify what they can record so that they have sufficient visual and cultural information to work with. Students will need to research and record this information, in depth, in order to draw informed reflections and connections between both sites.

Visual and cultural information exists in a variety of places, spaces and with various people, for example, the environment including rivers, hills, foliage, man-made landmarks such as buildings, road signs or fences, as well as elements such as colours, textures, patterns.

Step 3: Reflection and connection

This is the third component of the assessment for students and should carry as much weight and effort as the marae and their own site. You should support students to be deliberate and clear with the visual and contextual links they observe between their studied sites. For example, you could advise students to start with a Venn diagram (image or text) and/or use arrows to visibly connect visual elements including location, use of the site, foliage, who uses the site, images or signage around the site.

Students may use landscape images, objects from the landscape, text from information sources or maps, diagrams, and other visual material.

Making judgements

Evidence should focus on relationships and juxtapositions through compositional or diagrammatic plans to illustrate how things connect. For higher levels of achievement the student’s annotations will need to show informed understanding of a significant Māori site and clear connections with another significant site that they have recorded.

Helpful resources for the activity

Artists:

• Sandy Adsett
• Chris Bryant-Toi
• Conor Clarke
• Chevron Hassett
• Jasper James
• Rachael Rakena
• Lisa Reihana
• Natalie Robertson
• Lauren Semivan
• Kelcy Taratoa
• Kura Te Waru Rewi
• Cliff Whiting

Books:

• Brown, Deidre (2009). Māori Architecture — From fale to wharenui and beyond.
• Huia Publishers (2015, July, 1). Māori Carving: The art of recording Maori History.
• Panoho, Rangihiroa (2015). Māori Art: History, Architecture, Landscape & Theory.
• Adsett, Sandy & Whiting, Cliff (1996, January, 1). Mataora: The Living Face: Contemporary Maori Art.
• McCredie, Athol (2015, November, 15). New Zealand Photography Collected.
• Smith, Huhuna (2002, October, 10). Taiāwhio: Conversations with Contemporary Māori Artists.

Websites:

Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand — Historic places

Soldiers Rd

Kelcy Taratoa

[ File Resource ]

• Title: VA 1.1c Teacher Guidance
• Description: Visual Arts 1.1c Teacher Guidance
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