Taiohi Inside a Pukapuka from the incarcerated rangatahi of Mt Eden Corrections Facility. 

Taiohi Inside contains pieces from 21 people in prisons who engaged with Te Kāhui Creative Writing Programme across 2020 and 2021. 

Te Kāhui works in collaboration with Youth Arts New Zealand to create safe and accessible workshops for people from diverse backgrounds. The focus of the program is to create points for creativity and art to flourish, so that rangatahi can better express themselves and thrive artistically.

About Te Kāhui 

Te Kāhui offers self-reflective opportunities as a means for understanding one's own hauora, and how rangatahi can best position themselves moving forward. Participants not only benefit from sessions themselves, but also the long-term advantages that the ability to understand one’s complex emotions offer.

Te Kāhui has been running fully-functioning programmes since 2020 within Mt Eden Corrections Facility, Tongariro Prison, Springhill Prison, Whanganui prison, Auckland Women’s Prison, and Christchurch Women’s prison, PHAB, ‘312Hub’, Auckland Women’s Centre, Toi Ora, Corbans Estate, UN Youth and more, with high demand from other rangatahi-focussed facilities across Aotearoa.

The Te Kāhui programme is comprised of two different delivery options; one in which rangatahi engage with facilitators in person, and another in which they participate remotely. In-person facilitation provides an opportunity for the performance-oriented aspects of self-expression to be explored and shared with other cohort members. Here, rangatahi engage with a range of lyricism, reflective poetry, and image-work exercises.

Te Kāhui’s remote programme provides the opportunity for young inmates to complete any of our 3 currently available programme booklets, and request feedback on their writing from Te Kāhui's published creative writers, and/or to have their work typed out and graphically designed for them to keep or send to a loved one. At the end of both programme types, we provide participants with a certificate paying respect to their commitment to the programme, which they can then use within court-settings (if in Corrections), or keep and share with whānau.