Te Wiki Āhua o Aotearoa - Kaitiaki

In the third installment of our Te Wiki Āhua o Aotearoa story, we find ourselves seized by the echo chamber. A space where the glamour is loud, the pressure hits harder and the line between opportunity and exploitation becomes dangerously thin.

This is not your hero’s journey. It’s a mirror held up to an industry that grooms and consumes. Where control is dressed up as mentorship, and creativity is traded like currency. Yet, we find ourselves returning. Not because it’s easy, but because it matters. Our stories matter.

We give everything because we know, every season of Āhua, that this might be the last time we get to make this stand. We’re a community of young, scrappy, and hungry creatives that show up to the arena seemingly ill-equipped and eyes bigger than our stomachs.

Every show this August 22nd – 30th is more than just a runway, it’s a declaration. It’s a stand for what we value, what we protect, and what we carry forward as a community.

Runway 14

Show Title - Kaitiaki

A future burns through the forest, smoke rising from whenua that still remembers its name. Guardian Maia walks with it: part ancestor, part glitch in the system. ‘Kaitiaki’ by designer Junescry traces her path, across poisoned grounds, past collapsing ecosystems, through tangled whakapapa. Kakahu bear the marks of survival and adaption: woven tech and taiaha-slashed seams. Ancient silhouettes flicker through hyper-futurist codes, kinetic, resistant, uncolonised. This is not a costume drama. It’s a karanga from the edge of the world. A warning. A promise. And a reminder: not everything sacred is lost. Some things adapt. Some things fight back.