On the 7th of October the conference The Creative West was held, the third West Auckland Heritage Conference. This event was organised by the Waitakere Ranges Local Board with support from the Whau Local board. The conference is a collaborative effort by many in the community and council.

The Waitākere Ranges were an inspiration for many artists, from people inspired by famous painters like Colin McCahon, and the director of the McCahon House will be discussing the challenges of maintaining the right atmosphere for the museum, to architects like Henry Turbott who designed the Arataki Visitor Centre. Tanya Wilkinson shared her experience of living in an architecturally designed community house by Tibor Donner and three West Auckland Writing groups gave everyone ‘writing prompts’. This conference had more presentations then ever before, most of which can be downloaded as pdfs below.

While this conference still celebrates the unique heritage of the West, this year we’ve included more of a focus on contemporary artists, and how they were influenced by the great West Auckland artists of last century. Several talks feature heritage projects or groups that started last century, but are still going strong, so in a way, we could say heritage is being made as we speak.

This year, we’ve also been lucky to have had some extra events around the conference as well, including walks, book launches, exhibitions and a panel of actors and screen writers for local TV series like Outrageous Fortune, WestSide and Brokenwood.

The board thanks all those involved in putting it together and hopes everyone has enjoyed this creative heritage weekend!

Sandra Coney, Heritage portfolio, Waitakere Ranges Local Board.