Back to basics for star celebration
Arrowtown's Matariki celebrations will have a more homespun feel than in recent years.
In a return to its origins as an Arrowtown Preschool event, the preschool's teamed up with the township's primary school and kōhanga reo group to hold a low-key celebration for children and their families this coming Monday.
Preschool manager Jane Foster says all the tamariki have spent the past week or so investigating one of the nine stars of the Matariki cluster.
"Each class or group have taken a star and designed an art piece around that."
The children will come together at the primary school to show off the fruits of their artistic labours, with their whanau invited to come along at 3pm.
There'll then be an official opening by local te ao Māori authority Cory Ratahi and kapa haka performances.
There'll also be a hangi, sausages, hot chocolate, chips and s'mores, and the Matariki-inspired art will be exhibited in the school hall, Foster says.
As revealed by Scene in March, the preschool held a Matariki celebration for many years, but handed it over to the Arrowtown Promotion and Business Association in 2022 when increasingly onerous council requirements made the event too big for its volunteers to manage.
However, the association offered it back to the preschool last year after the costs of meeting those requirements — such as fencing, toilets, first aid, security, and waste and carbon mileage tracking — reached the point where it decided it would need to start charging an entry fee.
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