Mural contest celebrates 2020’s heroes

Art is a large part of Katikati's culture and planning for the new look 2021 NZ Mural Contest and Festival of Arts in October is under way. Presented by Katikati Open-Air Art, the Mural Contest will be held from October 5-9 with the Festival of Arts running for the entire month.

The theme for this year's mural contest is Celebrating Unsung Heroes in 2020.

“He aha te mea nui o te ao. He ta¯ngata, he ta¯ngata, he ta¯ngata”

“What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people it is people.”

During the pandemic, 2020 saw ‘unprecedented times' for New Zealand and globally with lockdowns, face masks, changes to employment, impacting us all. It has brought out the best in many of us from kindness, to networking within our community.

Open-Air Art would like to celebrate and acknowledge the individuals in our community who gave outstanding service to those isolated and in need.

“We want people to nominate someone who has done great deeds, but received little or no recognition for them — an unsung hero,” says OAA president Steve Graveson.

“In a move from our normal mural contest each artist will receive a photo of one of our chosen unsung heroes to paint.”

Steve says they have had keen interest from artists for this year's event, “so it will be exciting and we are looking forward to it”.

There will be $7000 up for grabs for the winner, along with the prestigious June Carlton Trophy.

This time Open-Air Art will keep all the murals so they can all be combined to form one large mural that will be installed somewhere around town, as a beautiful and fitting reminder of the global events of 2020.

Katch Katikati is again supporting the festival with a number of past events and attractions returning, plus a number of new ones — one especially has the ‘WOW' factor, never seen in Katikati before.

Event manager Kylie Watkins says they are very excited to be supporting Katikati Open-Art Art's incentive to bring to the community a month of events and activities in October.

“We hope to light up your life with the array of events on offer, like we plan to, with lighting up the town.”