Idea for September 2025: kotahitanga

My idea of the month is Kotahitanga.

This is a Māori word meaning unity, togetherness and solidarity.

I learned this from Anton Forde’s installation of 81 huge figures, Papare Eighty.one, at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich.

I’ll let the museum speak: ‘Forde’s work connects with the peaceful actions of the Māori community at Parihaka, New Zealand in November 1881, in the face of a British colonial invasion … It shows that collective action can safeguard the future of our communities for generations to come, without need for killing – both physically and culturally.’

A timely thought.

If you haven’t, do go and see the Sainsbury Centre. The Guardian calls it ‘the UK’s most radical musuem’. Its permanent display – the ‘living area’ – juxtaposes art from many ages and many cultures. Its temporary exhibitions are about not an artist or a genre but a question – the next one is ‘Can we stop killing each other?’. Admission is free: you pay what you think it’s worth. And, most interesting of all, it thinks of all its art as not cultural objects but living things. Radical is the right word.