Pohangina Community Hall Sessions

Pohangina Community Hall Sessions, bringing our Valley Community and friends together.
Community Halls were once a regular meeting place for locals, dances and gatherings, anyone could use them, and still can, but with the changes now all around us, cars and technology, halls have come into decline, Councils around the country debate the need for some halls, to the point of axing some.

Pohangina Community Hall Sessions is a local innovation to bring some excitement back to our hall, as well as bringing the community together. The Pohangina valley has grown over recent years, it’s time to meet your Neighbours and there friends, join us for the community hall sessions, everyone welcome and Best of all its free, things for the kids to do, byo picnic and drinks

Our First Event Features two community-orientated local artists

Musical miscellany Take Your Pick, a trio of musicians who play folk and traditional music from around the world, including Irish pub songs, Celtic trad, and American bluegrass. They take their band name from their shared inability to choose an instrument: between them they play some three dozen instruments. They are having far too much fun to try and pick a favourite!

Also we have a demonstration of nga taonga puoro (Maori musical instruments) by Warren Warbrick,
Rangitāne ki Manawatū, Te Arawa

A member of the peak Māori musical instrument research group, Haumanu, since the mid-1990s, Warren is a renowned maker of ngā taonga pūoro and one of approx. 120 living Māori artists entitled to use the Toi Iho trademark. His work is held in public and private collections around the world, including the National Museum of Scotland. Warren is tohunga whakairo for his iwi and involved in a wide range of cultural arts and practices as well as infrastructure projects in the city, including the Te Ahu a Turanga highway project. In 2018 Warren represented New Zealand at the Medellín International Poetry Festival, Colombia, in respect of cultural knowledge and metaphor. He has performed with the New Zealand String Quartet, Aroha String Quartet, Patricia Grace DCNZM and Apirana Taylor in various Chamber Music NZ projects, and with Voices NZ Chamber Choir. Warren is a member of bicultural duo Toi Warbrick, which performed Antipodeans in Pohangina in 2016. The duo has since performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Adelaide Fringe, New Zealand Fringe, and in Oxford (UK), and San Martin de Valdeiglesias (Spain). In 2018 the duo was recognised with a Regional Theatre Award for original script and production, and the Palmy Fringe Festival Judges’ Choice award. In 2021, Toi Warbrick was named Local Historian of the Year by the Palmerston North Heritage Trust.