Personal musings from our Creative Director

Mar 25, 2025

Ngā ia taihekenga o te wā, the tides of time

The ever flowing tides are a constant reminder of many things for us in our seaside community. The tides bring with it memories of times past, it indicates current changes and floats our ambitions for new endeavours beyond the horizon.

As the tide retreats it's also a reminder that our capacity and capability to give and receive naturally ebbs and flows too, as if influenced by a higher power. Like the moon as it waxes and wanes, we too rise and fall, our energy in sync with the natural order of our environment.

We take our time, in patient observation, reflecting, reforming and rebalancing. Remembering who we are, what we’re trying to achieve and most importantly why we’re doing it. As the tide turns on our third year here at Noa Blanket Co, it seems now more than ever our campaign for cause is not only relevant but vital in our current chaotic climate.

The word noa reflects a state of freedom so we remain steadfast, weaving stories that celebrate our uniqueness, our mana motuhake, our freedom to be all that we are destined to be. Each thread commemorates our unique whakapapa and our interconnectedness across time and space.

Te Matatini

As we watched and listened to the highest calibre of Māori performing arts this week at Te Matatini we followed stories that have the power to connect us, heal us, and inspire us.

We were humbled to see some of our nations greatest storytellers wrapped in our blankets, embracing and embodying the very stories, culture and values we’ve woven in wool, weft and warp.

As a nation we watched in awe and are reminded of the power of storytelling and the profound impact it can have on our collective humanity. In a world inundated with noise and distractions, storytelling remains a timeless art form that transcends boundaries and enriches lives.

Made in NZ

“In knowing something’s whakapapa, the layers that make it up, you can come to know how it came to be, how it relates to the rest of existence, and how it will come to exist in the future.”

Whakapapa is the cornerstone of our ethos, establishing our connection and relationship with the people and world around us - so creating a product from its inception, to production, from our farms to our loom to our homes, being ‘Made in NZ’ stands true to our core beliefs and values and is something we wear with pride as we stand amongst the world.

“Through whakapapa, we have a responsibility to shape the future well, to nurture and enhance these intergenerational relationships” (Burgess & Painting, 2020).

Being ‘Made in NZ’ also describes our aspirations for our whakapapa and the responsibility we carry to shape our future for the better. To support and enhance the wellbeing of our environment and our communities, reflecting the reciprocal nature of whakapapa as stewards for our time, ensuring this network of relationships endures into the future.

Together with other NZ artisans and designers we celebrated Auckland design week as a part of an exhibition entitled ‘Made in NZ’. Britomart's Spacefor provided a compact but impactful space to come together with our communities face to face over the week and concluded with a designer talk event where we discussed these principles of whakapapa, their importance and how we can better support being proudly ‘Made in NZ’ for our next generation of creators.

The late Moana Jackson states,

"For our notion of time is whakapapa based, and like whakapapa it has its own sense of never-ending beginnings in which time turns back on itself in order to bring the past into the present and then into the future.

Above all it is a notion of time which recognises the interconnectedness of all things."

Noa - Weaving time, weaving whakapapa.