Latest news with #Adsett
Scoop
7 days ago
- Automotive
- Scoop
Te Ahu a Turanga: The Story Behind The Art On New Zealand's Newest Highway
The new Te Ahu a Turanga Highway crossing the Ruahine Ranges is bookmarked on both ends by mahi toi (artwork), by two prominent Māori artists. The first drivers crossed over the 11.5km four-lane highway on Wednesday morning. It replaces the old State Highway 3 through the Manawatū Gorge which closed in 2017 due to slips Warren Warbrick (Rangitāne) was one of three artists who worked on the project. He said it was good to see his work go from drawings on paper to computer models to finally seeing it become a reality. "For me it's not really whether I'm happy or not, it's whether our people are happy," he said. The overarching concept for all the art pieces along the road was 'he aho tangata' - 'the human threads that bind us.' On the Palmerston North end of the new highway stands one of Warbrick's sculptures made of a concrete base named Aputa ki Wairau and a metal structure named Hine-te-Iwaiwa. Warbrick said the metal structure represents a turuturu, or weaving peg, whose 'thread' connects with the roundabout on the other side of the highway near Woodville. "Each of the roundabouts, although they are not created to look like turuturu but they are symbolic of it, so when you have two turuturu you have a line that stretches between the two that is referred to as the aho, or the sacred thread... So what we are looking at is the idea of the roundabouts being the turuturu and the road being that sacred thread." The 12 metre high sculpture on the Woodville roundabout is named Poutahu, and was designed and created by prominent artist Sandy Adsett. Warbrick said he has known Adsett for many years and it was great to have the opportunity to work with him. "It's one thing to know him but its quite a different thing to work with him, it's been very very cool," he said. Adsett (Ngāti Pahauwera, Ngāti Kahungunu) told RNZ there would be a lot more artwork along the highway but the soil on the either side wasn't able to hold much weight, so they shifted focus to the roundabouts, the lookout and the bridges along the highway. Adsett said the Poutahu sculpture near Woodville was based the structure of old wharenui that had a vertical pole at the centre of the whare to provide strength to the tahuhu (ridge beam). "I was learning as I went, on what could happen and of course the engineers would say 'well we could do [this] but we can't do that.' So there was a lot of discussions about the structure so it was interesting." Adsett said if there was going to be artworks and sculptures on major infrastructure projects like the Ahu a Turanga highway he was glad that the imagery was specific to New Zealand. "I think that in terms of Aotearoa our imagery is specific to Aotearoa, it's indigenous, so for overseas travellers or even for our own people to see the works, I won't say it's a comfort thing, but it's a pleasure to feel as though they have the ability to stand in these prominent public places and hold their own." It will be interesting to see the response to the artwork from both Māori and non-Māori, he said. "I think the enthusiasm and the encouragement of our different iwi was one that you respected and wanted to try and offer something and hopefully... our own people will accept the works... that we were able to do."
CBC
22-03-2025
- Business
- CBC
5 years later: Food columnist Jasmine Mangalaseril on how local food businesses survived pandemic lockdowns
Social Sharing Five years ago, the world as we know it changed. With the first stay-at-home orders in Canada being enforced mid-March 2020, some businesses adapted to work-from-home protocols. Restaurants were considered an essential service that remained open but under tight restrictions and so they needed creativity to keep the lights on and rent paid. Before the pandemic, the food service industry rode a high. Between 2008 and 2018, the sector's GDP growth led all major Canadian industries. In 2020, total food service sales tumbled by almost 30 per cent. Within a couple of years, a Restaurants Canada survey indicated just more than half were operating at a loss. Nationally, thousands of restaurants closed permanently, widening the gap between chains and independents. Between 2019 to 2023, the number of chain outlets increased by about 1,100 while independents lost almost 3,100. Today in Waterloo region and area, restaurant numbers have bounced back. More licenses were issued to businesses in the restaurant category by the end of 2024 than in 2019, with Waterloo seeing the largest total rise (30 per cent). Community support Fran Adsett opened her namesake restaurant in 2015, Frannie's, on Highway 7 between Kitchener and Guelph. Her homestyle cooking features fresh, local, in-season ingredients and it earned her a loyal customer base. Like many, she assumed normality would return after the first stay-at-home order. It didn't. COVID-19 became a blur of 20-hour days in the restaurant while looking for ways to remain open. This included opening a drive-thru for pre-ordered pick-ups ranging from butter tart sundaes to barbecue to fish and chips. Some customers pre-ordered 20 pies at a time to hand out to neighbours and friends. "The amount of people that said, 'You know what, friend? Don't worry 'cause we're here to support you,'" recalled Adsett. She introduced ready meals, including shepherd's pie and lasagna, something she's continued to do. Adsett acquired the lease next door and opened a seasonal ice cream shop. She set up a roadside produce centre featuring locally-sourced foods. Today, as people renew their search for local items, she's planning to bring back the produce centre this summer. "I just find that you always have to be ready to move mountains or whatever you have to do," said Adsett. "I work too hard to be where I am, to just let it crumble." Tough cookie Lou Gazzola spent 18 months in planning and concept testing, and a couple of months renovating his Waterloo cookie bakery. The plan was that university students and corporate clients were to be his key markets. Sweet Lou's Cookies opened just days before stay-at-home orders came down. Many students returned home. Businesses stopped hosting events and team meetings. So, he focused on other ways of getting his cookies into customer mouths. "What we had to do was focus on the delivery…and in-store pickup," explained Gazzola. "We had to extend our hours into the daytime and open longer hours [for workers ending their night shifts]." He could have gone in many directions to establish the shop's footing, but he stuck to his business plan. They brought in ice cream (for sandwiches and shakes) and donated cookies to first responders and social services. "We do all sorts of support work in the community, and the community just gives back to us," said Gazzola. "We didn't advertise that we were doing that, but people knew and so they would come in and support us." Virtual reality Chefs Kirstie Herbstreit and Jody O'Malley opened The Culinary Studio in 2011, with a teaching kitchen and communal table for 20. By 2020, they were catering, selling grab-and-go meals and their classes sold out six months in advance. As the pandemic's disruption stretched beyond the first two weeks, they had tens of thousands of dollars in registrations for classes they couldn't deliver. Herbstreit's chance encounter with a student, who asked about online classes, changed the course of their business. "And I said, 'Would you sign up?'," said Herbstreit. "And she was like, 'Oh yeah. We're so bored'." Their first online class included cook-along meal kits registrants could purchase. "The longer we went on, the more we refined and made the online world our space, it didn't make sense to go back to in-person," said O'Malley. They closed the physical cooking school and now have a warehouse from where curated ingredient kits are distributed. "Our titles changed from chef-owners to co-founders and chefs. We have a tech company that can reach so many more people," said O'Malley. "You just have to see the positive of it all. You can't go back. You can't go backwards."
