The Kiwifruit Capital of the World Te Puke Heritage Visitor Centre has found a home in the Capitol Theatre, it was confirmed recently.

Stuart Whitaker sat down with project leader Sue Matthews to find out more about the concept, how things are progressing and what securing a home for the centre means.

What is the Te Puke Kiwifruit Capital of the World Heritage Society Inc trying to achieve?

To become a conduit to bring together and develop synergies within our Te Puke district heritage space. We want to work together to build something that will grow and strengthen our identity, inspire pride, connection, health, wellbeing, optimism and discovery for generations to come.

We need to preserve what we have in our communities - have you thought about those kiwifruit icons just gathering dust at the back of the wardrobe and want them protected and available to add to our story? Some of it will be generational. Please contact us [email protected]

Why an incorporated society and not a trust?

We purposefully chose this to enable our community to have input into the direction and running of The Kiwifruit Capital of the World – Te Puke goodness experience.

We have a workshop planned to get feedback from some of our key community leaders.

Who is facilitating this workshop?

A director from Stitchbird, experts in visitor experience and public space design, will weave their magic to provide an interactive professional experience within our district.

How are things progressing?

Fantastic. We have leased the bottom floor of the Capitol Theatre and the takeover date is July 1. The overarching focus will be the kiwifruit story. There will also be opportunities to celebrate Te Puke and our nine distinct communities.

Te Puke is surrounded by vibrant communities of Manoeka, Te Matai, Rangiuru, Waitangi, Paengaroa, Maketū, Pongakawa, Pukehina and Ōtamarākau. These communities are blessed with iwi, schools, economic drivers and generational connections and are inclusive of our multicultural communities.

We want to walk beside them to find ways to celebrate each unique community.

We want to to find out the communities’ aspirations for being part of a “vibrant, action-focused and alive” heritage space.

When we develop resources and stories around each community there will be an opportunity to have these as part of our celebrations and then when it is time for the next exhibition – these can be disseminated back out to the communities – into our community halls and public spaces and create an ongoing platform to recognise and celebrate the greatness of each community.

For example, when we highlight Pongakawa, there is so much to celebrate from the school, the hall, heritage house, environmental wetlands. We will listen to these stories to learn and celebrate around their heroes, eg Denny Hulme, sports people.

We wish to sincerely thanks our iwi/hapū, Te Puke and our nine rural communities, business leaders and our multicultural communities, for supporting and encouraging this vision over many years. We have reached a point where we can now focus on this kiwifruit and community stories and make our exhibition spaces a reality.

Your encouragement, optimism and generosity in the gifting of time, wisdom, knowledge, ideas, along with significant donations of money and chattels, is deeply appreciated and valued. We have now reached the $100k as part of the establishment strategy.

Sitting beside this is to now apply seriously for funding agencies to develop the next phase.

To this end, we now ​have a bank account, and this makes it easier for donating those one-off donations that are going to support the development of the actual exhibition spaces.

What are our points of difference?

Firstly, the district’s assets: schools, people, industry, manufacturing, sawmills, dairying, high-quality milk products, kiwifruit, with amazing soils, weather.

It offers great growing conditions, and this traverses the whole community wellbeing.

The second point is that we are not a museum.

Thirdly, our communities are linked to the Te Arawa rohe and we have the 10 distinct communities (nine rural communities, plus Te Puke) to celebrate and can be part of developing healthy positive communities.

We want to connect with children, youth, adults and retirees.

There can be specific exhibitions and opportunities to engage within our multicultural communities by having interpreters available for specific exhibitions.