title: Growing up arty: Exploring children's experiences in Baycourt Community & Arts Centre. Phase one research report.

authors: Dean, Bronya

abstract: This project was a collaboration between Tauranga City Council and the University of Waikato to explore the role Tauranga’s principal performing arts venue, Baycourt Community & Arts Centre (Baycourt) has played in children’s lives. The overall aim of the project is to understand the relationship between Baycourt and young people in Tauranga Moana. The project addresses arts, identity, belonging, inclusion, community, and cultural citizenship in relation to children, Baycourt and the city. Of the 76 people who responded to a survey, 53 had experienced Baycourt as a child or young person. 13 people took part in either individual or focus group interviews about their childhood experiences in Baycourt. Their memories provide rich insights into the importance of having a city theatre that is accessible for children. The key themes identified are: schools as pathways to Baycourt; feeling a sense of belonging; performance identities; and lasting and transformative childhood experiences. We end the report by highlighting the importance of Baycourt for children as a place ‘of becoming’: a performer; adult; and cultural citizen. Overwhelmingly, Baycourt provides a place where positive and transformative relationships and connections are made between children, adults, schools, communities, and the city.

text: Growing up arty: Exploring children's experiences in Baycourt Community & Arts Centre. Phase one research report. This project was a collaboration between Tauranga City Council and the University of Waikato to explore the role Tauranga’s principal performing arts venue, Baycourt Community & Arts Centre (Baycourt) has played in children’s lives. The overall aim of the project is to understand the relationship between Baycourt and young people in Tauranga Moana. The project addresses arts, identity, belonging, inclusion, community, and cultural citizenship in relation to children, Baycourt and the city. Of the 76 people who responded to a survey, 53 had experienced Baycourt as a child or young person. 13 people took part in either individual or focus group interviews about their childhood experiences in Baycourt. Their memories provide rich insights into the importance of having a city theatre that is accessible for children. The key themes identified are: schools as pathways to Baycourt; feeling a sense of belonging; performance identities; and lasting and transformative childhood experiences. We end the report by highlighting the importance of Baycourt for children as a place ‘of becoming’: a performer; adult; and cultural citizen. Overwhelmingly, Baycourt provides a place where positive and transformative relationships and connections are made between children, adults, schools, communities, and the city.

year: 2023

title: Proactive lucidity: Superconsciousness, creativity, and the virtually real

authors: Maré, Marian

abstract: This thesis considers the significance and relevance of the distinction between artificial and natural environments and virtual reality experiences which seem to directly confront the question what is reality?. In focusing on challenges and changes to human conceptions of reality, current discourse on virtual technologies and their implications tends to assume that existing conceptions of time and space are fundamentally altered. This study investigates the creative resource that apparently exists beyond the commonly accepted spatial and temporal boundaries of human experience. The nature, processes, and forms of virtuality and dream lucidity encountered by demonstrably-creative, artistically-imaginative, technically-competent productive artists and composers involved with the visual media, are identified and investigated. Related consciousness experiences are further explored. 
Among the common factors in patterns which appear to most vitally prefigure and accompany the actual production of innovative art works, this study finds a strongly perceived and contextualised awareness of creative drive and a sense of directionality in that perception to be most significant. 
Integral theory, transpersonal psychology, holonic structuralism, feminist epistemology, and a participatory approach to research, guide and inform the conduct of these case studies. The introductory chapters explain the meaning of the term integral, outline the philosophy behind integral psychology, introduce the topic of location in respect of spirit and consciousness and art, and propose the dimensions of creativity. 
Longitudinally obtained results initially gathered under the focal headings of: forms of awareness, creative process and technology, and associated context, show that the foundations of most of the important issues in our lives cannot be found in physical space with simple location. Non-simple locus and worldspace, an idea which will be developed with reference to a theory of holons throughout the thesis, are addressed in terms of their phenomenologically-real referents. Context-dependency is reviewed in terms of multidimensional life experiences and reality as a whole, and the topic of integral semiotics is raised. 
This thesis unfolds a case for transpersonal healing and creativity enhancement through receptive multiple-state consciousness and lucid rehearsal. Proactive lucidity is found to be the deliberately receptive experience of extra-awareness, perception-enhancement, self-reflective insight, and natural activities which spontaneously occur during and across various 'altered' or 'multiple' states of consciousness. Such states include lucid dreams, witnessing dreaming, within-dream visions, and similar trance-like re/visualisations. This study finds proactive lucidity to be an invaluable problem-solving resource in helping people cope creatively with life issues. 
The latter chapters summarise the participants' insights into what they discern as causal factors underlying the core issues which deeply link the broad-ranging topics raised and explored in the course of this study. They identify parallels which indicate a form of inbuilt directionality in the developmental stages of human life and consciousness, and suggest how the spiritual domain might be related to creative currents in matter and life and mind. 
By way of real examples and metaphoric imagery, this study then proposes that these currents-in-conflict explain the devastating effects and consequences of a grand-scale hegemony of reductionism which manifests as a widespread loss of the spiritual in the West. It also explains the resultant collapse of the multidimensional Kosmos into a monological cosmos. 
Finally, in terms of transpersonal interpretation and superconsciousness, this study suggests there is actual form and structure in certain leanings or moral intuitions fundamental to human and non-human alike. It further suggests that in working for the individual such intuitions work for the greater good. 
The core of this thesis is about the exciting way a group of people exhibit their creative processes by using proactive lucidity to transcend ceilings. This study finds that the greater the depth of consciousness (=height of awareness) the clearer the intuition of the ground of creativity from which it issues and of which it is comprised.

text: Proactive lucidity: Superconsciousness, creativity, and the virtually real This thesis considers the significance and relevance of the distinction between artificial and natural environments and virtual reality experiences which seem to directly confront the question what is reality?. In focusing on challenges and changes to human conceptions of reality, current discourse on virtual technologies and their implications tends to assume that existing conceptions of time and space are fundamentally altered. This study investigates the creative resource that apparently exists beyond the commonly accepted spatial and temporal boundaries of human experience. The nature, processes, and forms of virtuality and dream lucidity encountered by demonstrably-creative, artistically-imaginative, technically-competent productive artists and composers involved with the visual media, are identified and investigated. Related consciousness experiences are further explored. 
Among the common factors in patterns which appear to most vitally prefigure and accompany the actual production of innovative art works, this study finds a strongly perceived and contextualised awareness of creative drive and a sense of directionality in that perception to be most significant. 
Integral theory, transpersonal psychology, holonic structuralism, feminist epistemology, and a participatory approach to research, guide and inform the conduct of these case studies. The introductory chapters explain the meaning of the term integral, outline the philosophy behind integral psychology, introduce the topic of location in respect of spirit and consciousness and art, and propose the dimensions of creativity. 
Longitudinally obtained results initially gathered under the focal headings of: forms of awareness, creative process and technology, and associated context, show that the foundations of most of the important issues in our lives cannot be found in physical space with simple location. Non-simple locus and worldspace, an idea which will be developed with reference to a theory of holons throughout the thesis, are addressed in terms of their phenomenologically-real referents. Context-dependency is reviewed in terms of multidimensional life experiences and reality as a whole, and the topic of integral semiotics is raised. 
This thesis unfolds a case for transpersonal healing and creativity enhancement through receptive multiple-state consciousness and lucid rehearsal. Proactive lucidity is found to be the deliberately receptive experience of extra-awareness, perception-enhancement, self-reflective insight, and natural activities which spontaneously occur during and across various 'altered' or 'multiple' states of consciousness. Such states include lucid dreams, witnessing dreaming, within-dream visions, and similar trance-like re/visualisations. This study finds proactive lucidity to be an invaluable problem-solving resource in helping people cope creatively with life issues. 
The latter chapters summarise the participants' insights into what they discern as causal factors underlying the core issues which deeply link the broad-ranging topics raised and explored in the course of this study. They identify parallels which indicate a form of inbuilt directionality in the developmental stages of human life and consciousness, and suggest how the spiritual domain might be related to creative currents in matter and life and mind. 
By way of real examples and metaphoric imagery, this study then proposes that these currents-in-conflict explain the devastating effects and consequences of a grand-scale hegemony of reductionism which manifests as a widespread loss of the spiritual in the West. It also explains the resultant collapse of the multidimensional Kosmos into a monological cosmos. 
Finally, in terms of transpersonal interpretation and superconsciousness, this study suggests there is actual form and structure in certain leanings or moral intuitions fundamental to human and non-human alike. It further suggests that in working for the individual such intuitions work for the greater good. 
The core of this thesis is about the exciting way a group of people exhibit their creative processes by using proactive lucidity to transcend ceilings. This study finds that the greater the depth of consciousness (=height of awareness) the clearer the intuition of the ground of creativity from which it issues and of which it is comprised.

year: 2004

title: Mōteatea Kau Te Ngākau: He aha ia nei i tuā atu i ngā kupu, i te rangi o te waiata?

authors: Tahi-Rangihau, Te Hauāuru Raeleen

subjects: Tūhoe waiata, composition, te reo Māori

abstract: ARIĀ
Māori have always expressed themselves through the medium of song, and the various stanzas contained within the many Māori compositions that exist are a rich depositary of knowledge, offering people an insight into the Māori world. Māori compositions are mirrors into the past reflecting the issues, language, and beliefs of the people of that era, and in many instances immortalising the feelings and ideas of the people. Such was the importance of traditional composition to Māori, that individuals skilled in this art form where held in high regard, and even in a modern context we still celebrate our revered composers.
This study is concerned with Tūhoe composition, and in particular the songs that have been composted for Te Wharekura o Huiarau. This school is located within the Tūhoe settlement of Ruatāhuna, and since its establishment a host of songs have been composed for the school to express its unique identity, as well as the feelings and beliefs of the different composers. This thesis argues that the various songs that have been sung by the children of Te Wharekura o Huiarau throughout the decades are clear markers of the children‟s identity, and by examining these songs a clear picture of the language, issues and influences of the different generations can be examined and investigated.
In addition, this study is concerned with the wider role of composition within Tūhoe society, exploring how this has developed across time, understanding the current state of Tūhoe composition and ultimately looking towards the future. This thesis will highlight many of the famous Tūhoe composers and their compositions, as well as various songs that are connected to Te Wharekura o Huiarau. These compositions will be studied with the view of creating a foundation for further work, that will ultimately support the development of a new generation of Tūhoe composers.

text: Mōteatea Kau Te Ngākau: He aha ia nei i tuā atu i ngā kupu, i te rangi o te waiata? ARIĀ
Māori have always expressed themselves through the medium of song, and the various stanzas contained within the many Māori compositions that exist are a rich depositary of knowledge, offering people an insight into the Māori world. Māori compositions are mirrors into the past reflecting the issues, language, and beliefs of the people of that era, and in many instances immortalising the feelings and ideas of the people. Such was the importance of traditional composition to Māori, that individuals skilled in this art form where held in high regard, and even in a modern context we still celebrate our revered composers.
This study is concerned with Tūhoe composition, and in particular the songs that have been composted for Te Wharekura o Huiarau. This school is located within the Tūhoe settlement of Ruatāhuna, and since its establishment a host of songs have been composed for the school to express its unique identity, as well as the feelings and beliefs of the different composers. This thesis argues that the various songs that have been sung by the children of Te Wharekura o Huiarau throughout the decades are clear markers of the children‟s identity, and by examining these songs a clear picture of the language, issues and influences of the different generations can be examined and investigated.
In addition, this study is concerned with the wider role of composition within Tūhoe society, exploring how this has developed across time, understanding the current state of Tūhoe composition and ultimately looking towards the future. This thesis will highlight many of the famous Tūhoe composers and their compositions, as well as various songs that are connected to Te Wharekura o Huiarau. These compositions will be studied with the view of creating a foundation for further work, that will ultimately support the development of a new generation of Tūhoe composers.

year: 2013