Art Heals: Community Initiatives after a Traumatic Weather Event. Ep.22 Precipice Podcast

Joss Hong has lived in Muriwai for 30 years and was an integral part of the collaborative community initiatives after Cyclone Gabrielle.

Joss talks about setting up and managing the food hub set up at the surf club in Muriwai after the cyclone, the organisation and distribution of clothing donations and setting up the ‘locals lounge’ in the surf club to provide a comfortable nurturing place for locals to come together.

She explains the goals and management of 3 community workshops she activated at the surf club in the recovery period.  ‘Love Letters to Muriwai’ and the ‘Viewing Frame’ and ‘Mosaic workshops’ which contributed to the commemorative sculpture.

And Joss shares her observations since the cyclone and suggestions to other communities.

Precipice launched on July 20th 2026. 3 seasons will be released across 4 weeks and then the full series of 26 episodes will be available for you to listen to at your leisure.

Season 1: Cyclone Gabrielle Hits Muriwai 

Season 2: Disaster Recovery and Community Restoration                     

Season 3: Community Initiatives after a Cyclone

Listen on You Tube  https://www.youtube.com/@precipicepodcast

Follow on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/precipicepodcast

Hosted and produced by Mandy Jakich. Commissioned and funded by Muriwai Community Association, supported by the Auckland Council Recovery Office.

Transcript

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Mandy 0:10

In this episode, I speak to Joss Hong. Joss has lived in Muriwai for 30 years and was an integral part of some collaborative community initiatives after Cyclone Gabrielle. Joss talks about setting up and managing the food hub, which was set up at the Surf Club in Muriwai after the Cyclone. She also speaks of the organisation and distribution of clothing donations and setting up the locals' lounge in the Surf Club to provide a comfortable nurturing place for locals to come together.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

We got donated chairs and furniture and cushions and all sorts of things and we replicated little spaces like little lounges.

Mandy 0:53

DOS explains the goals and management of three community workshops she activated at the Surf Club in the recovery period. Love letters to Miruwai.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Where everyone, regardless of age, was able to come to Murawai Surf Club and write letters to Mirawai about their love and their connection with Murawai. It could be letters, it could be a drawing, it could be a poem, it could be anything.

Mandy 1:21

The decorative viewing frame which has been erected just behind the surf tower.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Visitors to Murawai stood and looked through the frame. It actually showed them the scars on our beautiful cliffs of Murawai and to see the physical raw damage to our land and also hopefully for individuals to pause.

Mandy 1:51

And Jos talks about the community mosaic workshops which became part of the Murawai commemorative sculpture.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

My name is Jos Hong and I've lived in Murawai for nearly 30 years. My love affair with Murawai probably started when I was flatting in my twenties because my flatmates were all hang gliding out here, and then of course I fell in love with one of the hang glider pilots and the rest is history.

Mandy 2:30

So, Joss, you were very involved with a number of initiatives within the community after Cyclone Gabriel. Can you talk to us about Food Hub, how that got established and how you ran it?

SPEAKER_01 2:42

The Food Hub got established because there were so many people and organizations that wanted to donate products because they understood that many households and people and individuals had nothing. So we had this huge amount of product that had been donated, and we thought, what are we going to do with it? So we ended up creating a mini store at the Surf Club. There's a little garage there. And because of my background and working in fast memory consumer goods, then I ended up really creating signage just like it was a little supermarket. So that was one of the first things that happened. And as news got out, it was not only about providing physical product to individuals, but it was actually giving a hug, a gesture, a few words of support for them to know that we were there for them and they could come back whenever. And they were not on their own.

Mandy 3:54

Is there anything that uh you learned about the organization of the food hub that you could pass on to other communities?

SPEAKER_01 4:02

I think when you're organizing something like a food hub, it's about individuals coming together. It's a shared experience, but at the end of the day, it's also about being practical, about being organized and understanding how we can reach out to volunteers, understanding their skills and capabilities, so that we work as a team, but people are doing or responsible for the areas that they feel very comfortable with. So we had a lot of clothing that was donated, and so we needed people to help us sort through the clothing. So it was easy for individuals to find what they were looking for and to have things that was going to make a difference to their lives during this period, which at that stage no one knew how long people were going to be out of their homes for because we're still going through the category assessment. There was a lot of anxiety, but there was also a lot of practical issues that needed to be addressed.

Mandy 5:11

Were there any difficulties or challenges that you experienced with the food hub?

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Some of the logistical aspects in terms of well, where are we going to put all these things and how are we going to manage it? Secondly, in terms of the volunteers, um, do we have enough volunteers? How do we manage the rosters with the volunteers? And the third thing is it was a bringing together of people that probably many did not know each other, so it was about accelerating that trust and building that relationship between individuals that were really strangers, but the thing that had brought them together was they wanted to make a difference to help people in our community that had been affected. And everyone is very fragile, and when you're in a fragile state and you're hugely stressed, then sometimes maybe you're not behaving in your normal way. So it's being aware of those things which can be demanding for all of us, and it's a very normal response. One of the things that I identified quite early on that for those that were not able to go back to their homes, there was no real place to meet with Farno. And if you had to leave Murawai because you had nowhere to go and stay in Murawai, you might have gone to stay with family or friends in the city or wherever. When you came back to Murawai, there was nowhere for you to go and feel comfortable and it was like you're being in your own lounge. So I created an initiative where we set up a locals lounge. We got donated chairs and furniture and cushions and all sorts of things, and we replicated little spaces like little lounges. And we also encouraged anybody to do baking, which they could drop off. We also had the generosity of New World, our local supermarket, who gave us a coffee machine with coffee capsules and other things. And so it meant that this was open for all and it could be a place that you could unite with your friends and FONO in a safe, caring, nurtured environment. So once again, it was about reaching out to volunteers to help bring this together, but it was also the surf club that actually said, sure, you know, this is the surf club slash community hub. Of course, this is an important initiative for our community.

Mandy 7:58

You had various sort of activities that went on in the locals lounge or sort of alongside it.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

As part of the locals lounge, we understood that families had it affected, and what we mean by families is children. And so it was important to create spaces for play. So we had children's books, we had drawing pads, we had pens, we had pencils, we had all sorts of things which enabled children hopefully to feel that they could just play. We had toys donated, we had the sandpit going. So it was anything that makes children have an invitation to play and have a release of maybe stress that we maybe couldn't see. But I think play is a really, really important activity for all of us.

Mandy 8:54

Josh talks here about the workshop she started called Love Letters, which was run as part of the locals lounge meeting place in our community surf club.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Thinking about a creative outlet for our community, there was a lot of grief happening about Mutawai. A loss. So for me it was important that we bring people together but through an activity. So I ran a couple of workshops. One was Love Letters to Murawai, where everyone, regardless of age, was able to come to Murawai Surf Club and write letters to Murawai about their love and their connection with Murawai. It could be letters, it could be a drawing, it could be a poem, it could be anything. And we hung them all around the Surf Club for people when they came down to the locals lounge to enjoy a cup of tea or coffee or some homemade scones, could wander around and then reflect on what a very special place we live in and how we can move forward and have the support of one another.

Mandy 10:47

Joss explains another workshop that she set up, which was based around creating a viewing frame where the scars of the land in Muri could be seen and acknowledged.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Someone had donated a huge wooden frame that was to be erected down by the beach, and one of the workshops I ran to decorate the frame, the picture frame, was to make flowers from plastic bottles, discarded plastic bottles. And so once again, this was a very creative outlet for everyone. So the aim of the big frame and where we positioned it was that when particularly visitors to Mutaway stood and looked through the frame, it actually showed them the scars on our beautiful cliffs of Mutawai. And to see the damage, the physical raw damage to our land, and also hopefully for individuals to pause and think about what it might have been like if they in their own communities had been affected by such a tragedy. But I also think it's a reminder that climate change is real. And we know today that our weather is much more volatile than it was decades ago. And that as a community we can't have our head in the sand. We do need to work together to think about how we can be more resilient and be prepared for future weather events, be it flooding or slips. There are a number of things that you know we can do, any community can do to be more prepared. So after the cyclone, Maria and Abe initiated a project to have a commemorative sculpture for Murawai. One of the reasons for that was that with sixty plus homes being deconstructed or removed, it was going to be that not everyone could stay in Murawai and people would have to leave. And over the years of living in Murawai, I have found that if you live here, you just have this amazing emotional connection with Mirawai. The land, the people, everything about it. So Mira and Abe, unfortunately, were one of those households that had to leave Murawai, and they knew the importance that when they came back to Mirawai to visit, they wanted a place to go to that acknowledged what had happened, but also a place that would give some calmness and also a place that would give reflection. Maria reached out to me quite early on, knowing that I was heading up the Miraway Artist Collective and asked me to help on the team. One of the things that I did because we felt it was very important for the community to contribute to the public sculpture, which we commissioned Jeff Thompson to design and do, who's a well-known artist based in Helensville, but also has a strong empathy for the Mirawai community.

Mandy 14:48

I also speak to Jeff Thompson, the artist, about the sculpture on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

He devised a range of pillars, and one of the pillars, a number of pillars he said, should be for the community artwork. And so we agreed that mosaics would actually be a welcome part of that sculpture and we could use materials that were from the deconstructed properties to form these mosaics. And so once again we were at the surf club slash community center and we ran a number of workshops that were for everybody. So we used materials from these homes that Jeff gathered for us. So I ran the workshops and we prov and once again we asked for volunteers. They were usually Saturday mornings. We sat out at these tables, shoulder to shoulder, busy, being distracted, making our designing our mosaics. But the most amazing thing that came from these workshops was the conversation between individuals. Often they didn't each know each other, but they knew they were all committed to creating these sculptures. For many of us, being at the workshop in our conversation, it was incredibly cathartic and it was an incredible revealing of how raw the situation was for many of us. I think one of my observations post-Cyclone is communication is probably the key elements for supporting and helping each other, and that can be in many different forms. It can be from the face-to-face, it can be the phone calls, it can be the WhatsApp groups, it can be the Facebook groups, it can be the emails, it can be the posters. So to me, one of the things is uh we all consume information differently. And uh when you've been traumatized, sometimes it takes multiple times to see and hear and read a message before you actually get it. So my suggestion to anyone in any community is don't rely on one single way of communicating. Use multiple. And sometimes you might think that you're over-communicating, but actually in some ways, you're almost better to over than under communicate.

Mandy 17:34

What have you learned about yourself? And did you find being involved with these initiatives quite cathartic and healing and and made you cope with the with the experience slightly better?

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Being involved in these projects on reflection was incredibly cathartic for me because I'm a doer. I can't sit on the sidelines. It's like I look at my community and I love my community. And I thought I do have experience and I do have skills that I think would be valuable. So I'm hoping that some of the initiatives I got involved in really did make a genuine difference to how they coped and how they were able to afford and know that actually this is going to be okay. It might take a while, but actually it's going to be okay. That Murawai, it's still a very, very special place. I think the amazing thing for me about Muraway and the way that we coped after the event, it brought out so many individuals that are so skilled and professional that very quickly we were all on the same page, and it was working as a strong team that meant that our voice was heard in a clear and concise way. Very early on, we said as a group, we are not a complaints committee. That is not going to do anything for our community because we need some tangible things, and we need our voice heard in a way that the messages are clear and understood, and that engenders empathy and a willingness to say we want to help that community. And I think the other thing we realized is we're not al we were not alone in this, so we reached out to our other community neighbours like PH and Bethels to say, look, we know we have common challenges, let's group together when we can. And that made a huge difference.

Mandy 20:28

Soundtrack by local Middawai band Tin People, written in response to Sycan Gabrielle. Nummahi, thank you to the Middleware community for their input and bravery and for sharing their stories. And thank you for listening.