Arts group reflects on love, support

• Published date: 24 April 2024
• Author: Maddisyn Jeffares
• Publication title: Hastings Leader, The

A lot of hard work, volunteer hours and equipment have gone into rebuilding the pottery group’s rooms

In the days following the cyclone damage many of the pottery group’s members made their way out to Waiohiki to help dig out the village and salvage whatever could be saved.

Taradale Pottery Group president Christine Heaney wasn’t able to personally see the damage done to her club for a couple of weeks, as she lives in Puketapu and was dealing with her own flooding and silt issues. However, she was told the damage was extensive, flood waters had run through the whole village and left behind a layer of silt; in equipment, in the walls and just everywhere.

By the time Heaney eventually got through to Waiohiki a lot of the cleaning up had already been done by pottery group life member John Gisborne, who lives in the arts village, along with help from other pottery members and volunteers who came to help.

Heaney said, “It was fantastic to see so many people come together and achieve so much.”

For Heaney, the hardest part of the clubroom being hit by Cyclone Gabrielle was knowing where to start and what to do.

“We were a bit like stunned mullets for a couple of months, but it slowly became clear that our old workshop could not be renovated and refurbished for several years,” she said.

The Waiohiki Charitable Community Trust gave the club an alternative area in a section of the old dairy that hadn’t been as badly damaged, so the group got to work water-blasting, building walls, cleaning away yet more silt and painting walls.

With many volunteered hours, an addition of three new kilns and four new wheels to add to the six wheels saved after the cyclone, boxes of donated tools and other miscellaneous equipment, the old shop was transformed into the new pottery workshop and the club is now open again.

Heaney said, “We’ve been overwhelmed by the generosity of others and have received so much aroha.”

The...