Ngā Kaitautoko - supporters

Generosity

To build the instruments for the sound garden I needed a workshop and tools. Thankfully I had everything I needed from a very generous new friend named Murray Kilpatrick. I met Murray when I came around to help me learn the accordion in 2016, and when he saw my artistic projects (no instruments at that stage) he offered his workshop, should I ever need one! A month or so afterwards with new plans, I decided to take him up on his offer.

Murray playing my sound garden marimba

Murray is not only a woodwork and metalwork teacher with a well-stocked workshop, he's also a great musician who plays folk music and a luthier making his own guitars, mandolins and such in his spare time. Amazing! His workshop is full of interesting timbers, frames and bits and bobs for making these things.

The marimba, the flipflopophone, and the plumber

Deciding I needed some new teaching instruments for the kura in late 2016, I rang around plumbers in Lower Hutt hoping to find some pipe offcuts for little or nothing as I had in Hokitika. I got nowhere, but eventually a local plumber, Mike Ellis asked me what I wanted to do. Saying he had a soft spot for schools, Mike offered not just to give me some free pipe but to pay for all the materials for a contrabass marimba and flipflopophone! What a legend!

I used Murray's excellent workshop and tools to build the marimba over a week of my holidays plus the first week of the school year. Learning to tune the bars, including the harmonic overtones was tricky but very rewarding.

When I emailed various signwriters to get quotes on lettering stickers for naming the notes, Fine Signs and Wellington Signs generously offered to do it for free, and Phil from Fine Signs also cut out my kōwhaiwhai patterns on his vinyl cutter, saving me a lot of work when it came to decorating the instrument.

Ngutu kākā: Kākā make a lot of noise, so I thought this pattern appropriate.

To thank Mike Ellis, Murray and Phil I organised a performance during morning karakia at the end of term 1, and organised a local reporter to visit and do an article on it, in the hope that the sponsors would receive some publicity from their generosity. Two of our Y8 students presented a clever instrumental piece they'd composed on the marimba before the whole Y6 class performed a waiata using a range of instruments, including the flipflopophone I'd managed to construct the previous day!

One day wonder! Thanks Robyn for the help 😊

Mike Ellis and whānau, Nicole Swain from Fine Signs, and Murray & Julie Kilpatrick

As you can see, a lot of what I do has come about through the generosity and goodwill of others, and I am very grateful. That's not even mentioning my wonderful whānau, who back me in everything I do. These instruments are not specifically part of the sound garden, but I thought this was a good opportunity to acknowledge the people who made them happen, and it's all part of the story anyway! 

I am also grateful to my good friends Nadine and David, whose van I use to transport supplies, and the various other people who have offered advice on instrument making, discounts on their products (Resene and Tony from Plumbing World have been great here), and in particular to the team at Tātai Aho Rau - CORE Education, whose funding has meant the project could happen. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa!

He titiro ki te wāhi mahi rākau a Murray

Murray's workshop