Te Ora Auaha – Creative Wellbeing Alliance Aotearoa
Welcome to Te Ora Auaha, The University of Auckland’s new national alliance of artists, academics and health professionals committed to a healthier New Zealand through the arts.
Te Ora Auaha: Creative Wellbeing Alliance Aotearoa is made up of individuals, groups, and organisations across the arts, health, youth, social and education sectors. It represents artists who work in prisons, in hospitals, in psychiatric wards, with the homeless, and with young people in trouble or despair.
Professor Peter O’Connor of the Creative Thinking Project at the University of Auckland spoke at today’s launch. He says artists who work in these areas are undervalued, under-resourced and largely unrecognised.
O’Connor says, ‘There is overwhelming international evidence to support the idea that the arts are vital to the well-being of individuals, communities and to a nation. Te Ora Auaha provides a platform for artists and health professionals to come together.’
‘There are some things only the arts can heal, the deep sicknesses which impact on the body of a country: racism, terrorism, inequality. The arts are a powerful way of healing. They do that by making beautiful things to remind us of the joy and wonder of being alive. The last two weeks have taught us as a nation that the arts are absolutely central to any recovery.’
‘The arts are also bridges,’ says Peter. ‘They are a bridge to the past and to the present. We’ve used the arts to farewell and to remember. We use them to bridge the loneliness of everyday life in shared poetry and in the songs we share. They are also the bridges that take us into the deepest parts of who we are, where the deepest hurts dwell, as individuals and as communities. Finally, they create a way to move into the future, to reimagine a different and better world.’
For further information about Te Ora Auaha contact Alex Harvey at a.harvey@auckland.ac.nz.