On Friday 5th December, we had the official unveiling of our school pepeha and mural - although the wind did have other ideas and it was mostly unveiled the day before!

In 2024, a group of Year 5 & 6 students, with the support of Year 2 teacher Robyn Cochrane,  worked with artist Shane Hansen to design and create a school mural, supported by the Creatives in School programme (no longer available unfortunately - let's bring that one back!)

Shane is an artist, as well as a furniture and fashion designer. He incorporates culture and the environment into a lot of his work. He worked with students to unpack our kura, where it sits in the world and what our values are. From there, the students learned how to use stencils and masking tape and how to blend colours. Each produced an individual piece and then worked on the mural itself.

The mural has lots of different meanings and aspects. It was made to represent our kura and whenua. On the mural there are our four TPS learner profiles - the tui, who represents being an achiever, the piwakawaka who represents being a balanced learner, the ruru, representing being a thinker, and lastly the kiwi, who represents being an engaged citizen. The rainbow sky represents never giving up and at the the back, the waka symbolises that we are in this together. 

We have also been working with Te Kawerau a Maki as part of their Mana Kura programme and as part of this, staff have been refining and learning more about our pepeha. Having the school pepeha stand alongside our mural is truly special.

Pictured below are three of our students from the original group who worked with Shane on the project, Brianna, Annabelle, and Hunter. They were our hosts this morning at the unveiling and spoke about the process and the meaning behind the mural. They did a fabulous job, ngā mihi!