Onehunga is throwing a nine-day celebration of the creativity that defines the suburb. Josie Adams reports on what you need to visit on every single day of the Onehunga Arts Festival.

More than 35 events are scheduled to take place in Onehunga from the 22nd June through to the 30th as part of the suburb’s first arts festival. That’s 35 reasons to head to the creative suburb next week. The festival is a huge community effort and includes everything from kids’ classes to dance therapy and live tā moko tattooing demonstrations.

Inspired by local artist Bobby MacDonald’s mural The Story of the People Weaver, the festival will celebrate Matariki alongside the diverse work of the greater artistic community. To help you celebrate Matariki, art, and Onehunga, we’ve created a sample diary: nine days of inspiration and creation in one of Auckland’s most exciting suburbs.

Saturday 22nd

The Onehunga Arts Festival officially kicks off at 10 am on Saturday, outside the Onehunga Community Library on Church Street. Performances will include the Tatau Dance Academy and local hip-hop royalty SWIDT. We recommend getting there early to catch members of the famous 312 Hub perform a few sets.

After seeing the team in action, you can see them at work by popping down to the Hub itself on Payne’s Lane, where the team is starting the festival in style. Super-creative Jermaine Dean is hosting a limited-space ‘Mates and Paints’ workshop for you to upcycle your old clothes. One session is at 10 am, and the next at 2 pm.

From 11 am visit St Peter’s Church to find hidden gems from the local artists. The exhibitions showcase the uncovered talent of Onehunga’s artistic community and features an array of painting, photography, sculpture and textile arts. Make a purchase!

Once the sun begins to set, head along to the Nga Atua Hou light projection at 77 Selwyn and Arthur Streets. Saturday night will be the first of two light shows, designed to celebrate Matariki by playing off Bobby MacDonald’s mural. The Story of the People Weaver features an image of local artist Amiria Puia-Taylor, who is known as a ‘people weaver’ for her work in bringing the communities of Onehunga together. Above her floats Hine Te Iwaiwa, the goddess of weaving and fertility. The light show will loop every 30 minutes between 6 pm and 9 pm, so you can pop in any time throughout the evening.

Sunday 23rd

On Sunday, start the day off by visiting the old Hard-to-Find bookstore. The books may be gone, but the building is full; it will be home to a gallery pop-up all week. Work across a wide range of mediums — photography, paint, sculpture, textiles — from local artists will be on display from 9 am until 4 pm.

Once you’ve whet your high-art appetite, mosy on down to St Peter’s church for something a little less conventional. Crochet artist Lissy Cole will be yarn-bombing a bench and showing off her caravan, Handy Dandy.

If you missed the light show the night before, grab a bite at Almaz cafe and head over to the Trident car park to watch The Story of the People Weaver light up once again; the storytelling is beautiful and the Matariki stars will be shining bright overhead.

Monday 24th

From 10.30 am – 1.30 pm on Monday, you can head to the Onehunga community centre to learn the traditional art of weaving. No experience is necessary, and materials will be provided. However, places are limited so you may want to call ahead.

After creating your own piece of locally-inspired art, you can search out Bobby MacDonald, who’s already working on his next piece. From 11 am to 4 pm every day this week, Bobby will be joined by fellow artist Karlee Hirovaana-Nicholls on the corner of Onehunga Mall and Pearce Street. They will be transforming the wall into a piece commemorating Elizabeth Yates, elected mayor of Onehunga in 1893, she was the first female mayor and justice of the peace in the British empire.

Watching the mural come together over the week is a fantastic opportunity for Aucklanders to learn more about local history and art, and how they intertwine. For more local takes on art and Onehunga, head to the 312 Hub for a photography exhibition. Included in this exhibit will be winning images from the What Does Onehunga Mean To You? kids’ photography competition.

Tuesday 25th

Dance movement therapy is increasingly popular, but is often inaccessible — it can be hard to find teachers or classes at all, let alone in your price range. On Tuesday at 1.30 pm, you can find a therapy group at the Onehunga community centre for just a gold coin entry. Both youth and adults with special needs including autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and cognitive delays are encouraged to come along to this inclusive dance group, designed to grow self-expression and social connection.

Follow up your self-expression with a learning experience: on both Monday and Tuesday, there’s a wood-carving demo at the former Hard-to-Find bookshop. From 3 pm to 7 pm, you can watch local carver Bayz Macdonald and his mahi whakairo in a live demonstration of traditional Māori carving.

On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, Little Industry cafe will host Korero Toi, a series of art talks. Meant to highlight the many artists that thrive in Onehunga, Korero Toi is a great place to hear more about life as a creative, and how the Onehunga community makes it work. Local artists with work on display at the old Hard-to-Find bookstore will share their practices, processes, and parts of their personal life with anyone interested.

Wednesday 26th

Emboldened by the Korero Toi talks and want to start creating? Head down to the community centre on Wednesday morning for a structured art class. Open to all skill levels, this free class is headed by local artist Keith Harford, who runs the same class most Wednesdays throughout the year.

If you’d like, you can follow up your art class with a walk around the pottery exhibition. Set up in The Box Gallery, this display showcases the best of local ceramic artists. Some pieces will be available for sale, so you can take home a unique Onehunga memento.

Follow up a calm day of art appreciation with a little theatre! The historic Dolphin Theatre is already showing First Date, a delightful, romantic show. It’s on every night at 8 pm, and earlier on Saturdays. The last day of its run is Saturday the 29th, so don’t miss out!

Thursday 27th

On Thursday morning drop by one of the festival’s historical exhibits. The community house on Selwyn Street is holding a short heritage exhibition, which for only $2 will take visitors back through the past using historical records. Photographs and registers feature alongside old primary school records and dental clinic artefacts.

If you have time afterwards, you can pop in for a bite at Craft Club, held inside Little Industry cafe. If you’re looking to do a little socialising while you finish your macramé, this is the place. From 10 am to noon, you can bring your craft projects along and complete in the company of like-minded folk and good coffee.

The Hard-to-Find pop up at 171 Onehunga Mall is open late on Thursday, so if you’re missing the galleries due to your 9 – 5 job you can drop by for a look-see any time up until 7 pm.

Friday 28th

For the nimble-fingered, Sewing Machine World on the Onehunga Mall will be hosting a live demonstration on how to make a kimono jacket from 10 am until 2 pm. It’s a great chance to explore the craft shops on the suburb’s main strip: Naji’s Craft, and Tamerlane.

If you’re looking for some life-changing theatre, head along to The Great Escape at The Potters House Church. Showing on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, this show requires only a gold coin donation and promises an uplifting look at teen suicide. Using true stories of hope and saved lives, The Great Escape shows it’s possible to escape from your darkest moments.

For a lighter entertainment option, the community centre will be showing a series of short films about Onehunga and Matariki. Both new and old, these films will educate and enchant on the Friday and Saturday nights, between 6pm and 8pm. Oh, and don’t forget — tea and coffee are provided.

Saturday 29th

At a loss for what to do with your kids on a Saturday morning? Never fear, the 312 Hub is here. Visual arts specialist Nikita Chandra will be facilitating an art class for children between 9 and 13, with all materials donated by National Art Supplies.

Your preschoolers also have options: the library will have a half-hour of story time at 10.30 am. Local author Claire Bunt will be reading from her books The Green Hat That Blew Away and What Ever Happened to Milo?.

Hear from another local artist at Native Studios, where local tattooists will be doing live demonstrations of their world-class tā moko and Polynesian tatau from 10 am until 2 pm. You might even like to book yourself in!

For adults with an artistic itch, local cocktail bar The Bramble will be hosting a poetry writing workshop, lead by local poet Marina Afelesio. Let your creative juices flow with the help of a good drop and some mood lighting.

Sunday 30th

On the final day of the festival, take a look back at the families of Onehunga. Well-known Auckland photographer Tom Ang’s exhibit will be in the blue laneway next to the Onehunga club, and it’s the perfect way to get to know the suburb through its people. He’s captured unique, intergenerational family portraits and displayed them in the colourful streets of Onehunga, creating an intimate viewing experience that is on throughout the week.

Back at the 312 Hub again for the afternoon, you can participate in a hikoi that will reconnect you with the history of Te Manukanuka o Hoturoa as well as highlight the public artworks of Onehunga. You will have the opportunity to take some selfies in front of the famous Onehunga wall, and grab some lush local kai (we recommend Mr T’s for coffee and Penny Lane’s Bakery for pies).

The Hub will also be hosting a mural art workshop, which will teach you the basics of mural-painting alongside some easy ways to keep your mural environmentally-friendly.

This is the first time the festival has been held, and in classic Onehunga fashion, they’re basing it on the community. The locals have generosity and talent in piles, so be sure to visit — and then visit again, because Onehunga will always surprise you.

Check out the full line-up of events here.

This content was created in paid partnership with the Onehunga Business Association. Learn more about our partnerships here. 

Onehunga is one of the most eccentric suburbs in the supercity. Josie Adams got a tour of the beating heart of Auckland from its inventive locals.

Onehunga sits at the very centre of Auckland, nestled between Mangere and Cornwall Park. Major transport arteries flow through and around the suburb connecting east to west and north to south. Visit for the day and you’ll find a joyful community that represents every part of Auckland. The streets are full of humble history, colour, and eccentric locals. There’s growth and development coming – and it’s been welcomed as an opportunity. All at once, Onehunga is artsy, grimy, and family-friendly.

My first guide is Francesca Rudkin, Newstalk ZB host and film critic. She has an air of being permanently rushed off her feet and happy about it. Her house, an art-deco design with a steeply-sloping but lemon-heavy backyard, is on one of Onehunga’s heritage streets. She’s been here for 12 years. She and her husband moved to the suburb when they started a family, and can’t imagine raising their two kids anywhere else in Auckland. Their kids get to grow up surrounded by what Francesca sees as a valuable community. “I think living here will keep them grounded,” she says. “It’s all rugged. It’s real. That’s the best thing about it.”

Only five minutes from her house is the waterfront. I didn’t think of Onehunga as coastal, but it was only cut off from the ocean by the South Western motorway in 1977. Four years ago the council gave Onehunga back its beach when it built a bridge over the motorway and turned the land into a park called Taumanu (‘reclamation’). Here, the suburb’s natural and urban environments happily collide. New Zealand’s first cable-towed wakeboarding park pulls riders over jumps and rails in the middle of a man-made lake. Dogs chase balls in its shallows. Children ride bikes, scooters and skateboards on the halfpipe. This organised chaos is a perfect representation of the suburb she loves.

Standing on the bridge, the Manukau harbour on one side and the cranes of development on the other, Francesca points out three religious spires – one Anglican, one Catholic, one Hindu – that point up between powerlines, cellphone towers and rising apartment blocks. Over the bridge, artfully man-made beaches wind along to a running trail, which works its way along the coast and through native bush and wildlife all the way to New Lynn. It’s all of Auckland in one scene: harbour, bush, and industry.

At Jellicoe Park, with its rows of towering palm trees, Francesca takes us on a history lesson. Opened in 1923, before it became a public park it was home to Onehunga’s most revered colonists: the Fencibles. The Fencibles were retired British soldiers sent to Auckland as a protection force for the new settlers in the 1840s. They were given a cottage and some land, which after seven years of service they would own. There are still some 90-year old residents with neighbourhood streets named after their dads.

On the park’s grassy banks we admired the replica of a Fencible cottage, an original military blockhouse, and the original 1856 manse for the Congregational church. Visit on the first and third Sunday of each month and you can explore the inside of the buildings.

The lineage of Onehunga is intertwined with war. Onehunga sent hundreds of its residents to both wars, resulting in a massive archway in memory of them, and a list of those who lost their lives engraved on the side of the public swimming pool. The Onehunga war memorial swimming pool is free for kids and just a few coins for adults. Its high diving board has been a constant in the lives of local children since 1956.

We come out on to the famous Onehunga Mall through the cemetery at St. Peter’s Anglican church. We hunted out the plaque of Elizabeth Yates, who, when she took the mayoralty of Onehunga in 1893, became the first female mayor in the British Empire. Next week a mural of Yates is being painted on the corner of the Mall and Pearce St, as part of the Onehunga Arts Festival. Come and watch it take shape.

Francesca takes us for a wander from the church to Penny Lane’s Bakery – a favourite of local hip hop heroes SWIDT. It’s just a few blocks down Onehunga Mall, past the first iconic original Look Sharp and, the bright clothing of Tav Pacific.

Francesca comes to Penny Lane’s for the slices and retro lolly cakes that remind her of visiting her grandmother. SWIDT comes to Penny Lane’s for the award-winning pies. A crisp and flaky pastry, a smooth filling, a trail of crumbs down the main strip; that’s a good pie.

Back down the hill and onto a side street, Francesca points out The Fade Joint, a barber that’s become a focal point of the community with its pool table and slick fades. “It’s very cool,” she says as we peer in the windows. A friendly dig at her husband’s age, Francesca notes that he is probably too old for a dope fade, and shows us his friendly barber on the main street: Brother Haircut.

To an outsider, it looks like Onehunga’s soul hangs in the balance. $140 million has been dedicated to developing the suburb over a decade, and we are already three years in. The growth is being managed by Panuku Development Auckland. Coming in the next few years is housing for thousands of new residents, improved transport networks, and the continued development of the natural environment.

I ask Francesca if she felt the origins and heart of Onehunga would change with the proposed new developments. She’s sure nothing will change. “Onehunga is diverse in every way: economically, ethnically, socially,” she leans over the car and holds my gaze. “Onehunga’s soul will never die.”

In fact, it feels like it’s growing. Before my second tour, I start with a caffeine hit on the main strip. Mr T’s, a coffee shop, bakery, and Vietnamese restaurant all in one, is part of Onehunga’s evolving series of stores. The coffee is dark and the room is filled with the smell of Dieu Tran’s (Mr T himself) baking. The authentic phở is the perfect way to warm up on a winter’s day.

Hidden off the main street is the neighbourhood’s own coffee roastery, Dear Deer. For something stronger, the cocktails at The Bramble are famously good. In the centre of town is The Good Home, a family-friendly gastropub filling the beautiful old library. It’s equipped with a small playground for the kids and dogs are welcome.

Across the road from Mr T’s and next to Brother Haircut is Native Studios, a tattoo parlour that specialises in tā moko. One of the artists and owners, Tyler Jade, nods up at the apartments across the road above the ground floor shops. “Those are all empty. Landlords put the rent up on a lot of main street property, but no-one’s moved in.”

While we’re chatting, there’s a knock at the door. The guy who runs the sushi store up the road has come bearing plates laden with all the vegetarian sushi a family could want. All porcelain, no plastic. “Yeah, he’s just down the road,” explains Heeds. “So he brings them to us.”

This close-knit community is something hard to find elsewhere in Auckland. “Here we have rich and poor, white and brown, all religions, and no problems,” says Tyler Jade. “My kids call the Indian couple next door Nana and Koro.”

Anywhere else in Auckland, the prospect of new intensive housing and an influx of new residents would upset the locals. Not here. Everyone’s happy to accommodate a few extra folks. “We’d like more people to move in,” says Heeds.

“There’s a strong spiritual history here,” says the family, referring to not just the many places of worship dotted around Onehunga but also the suburb’s past: “Onehunga” itself means “burial place,” referring to the Māori burial caves that were once used. Heeds and Jade point out the latest in the spiritual economy: a local shaman, who lives above a money lender. Their other neighbour is Petra Zaleski, the vicar at St Peter’s Anglican church famed for her Dr Martens and tattoos.

“Have you seen the swimming pool?” Heeds asks, urgently. It’s very important. “You should see their diving board. I loved that as a kid.” I can imagine Francesca’s daughter lining up to bomb off the high board next to Heeds’ daughter, Tui.

The war memorial swimming pool is popular with the kids at The 312 Hub, too. Behind the main road and across from Dress-Smart is a creative workshop, run for youth by youth. Kian Sinapati is showing us around. He’s 18 years old and a member of The Table, a group of young local leaders who organise art education programmes, music events, and more for the youth in the area.

“The Hub is a safe space,” he says. “We have some kids coming here who are going through a lot at home. This is something positive for them to do.” When Kian joined The Hub only a year ago he found that putting in some creative hours gave him a purpose in life. “It’s amazing to see other kids come here and find their purpose, too.”

With community activities for youth being taken away or monetised – basketball courts turned into parking, street art becoming commodified – places like The 312 Hub are more important than ever. Kian might be young, but he’s run art programmes for toddlers and will be performing at the launch event of the Onehunga Arts Festival later this month. “It’s pretty amazing what we can pull off,” he confesses. This is the closest he’ll come to admitting how much he’s achieved.

The members of The Table are young, but they’ve already achieved a huge amount in a short time. Irihana Katene is only 15, but she takes her responsibilities seriously. “I’m a voice for kids who don’t have one,” she says. She and Kian are advocates, spending time talking to Panuku, the council, and various boards to communicate what kids need – and not just those in Onehunga. All through our chat kids of all ages have been coming through the hub, picking up paintbrushes, grabbing guitars. Many of them come from surrounding suburbs – Mangere, Three Kings, Otahuhu. Later tonight, several of them will fly to Wellington to pitch to Creative New Zealand.

The 312 Hub is a vibrant, welcoming, and growing space. “You don’t have to be creative,” says Kian. “You just have to have some hustle in you. We’re all hustlers.” A year nine in a bucket hat behind him nods eagerly. A sticker on the window tells us this place is good vibes only.

That’s the key. Panuku, The 312 Hub, and locals like Francesca are working to keep Onehunga’s good vibes strong throughout this redevelopment. Gentrification is a touchy subject for all, but Onehunga wants and might even need more residents. It just doesn’t want the price tag that comes with it. The essence of Onehunga – art, family, music, a swimming pool – costs less than the rent on the apartments on the main strip.

Visit Onehunga and you’ll see Auckland evolving in real time. Grab a pie, a cocktail, a fade, and meet the local businesses and residents who are retaining the suburb’s unique vibe while the city grows from the suburb’s fertile soil.

This content was created in paid partnership with the Onehunga Business Association. Learn more about our partnerships here.