Residents ponder Motueka's long term future

September 26th, 2014
[by David Armstrong]

About 60 people attended the first public follow-up meeting after the Motueka Economic Summit on Wednesday night to put their views and aspirations for a more successful Motueka toward 2030.

The economic summit, held on August 27th (see our earlier story), brought 120 people from businesses and the broader community to hear eight speakers explain the part their business or organisation played in the Motueka area, and suggest ways in which improvements could be made.

After informal meetings among people who wanted to help take the next steps, a public meeting called a "think tank" was held at Memorial Hall this week, using cafe-style discussion groups and wide participation of all attending.

The organisers - Steve Henry, Chris Salt and Andrew Stephenson - guided the participants through a few simple but effective exercises, beginning with every person's answer to the question: 'What does success look like for Motueka in 2030?'

After listing all the responses, the groups at each table then moved to other tables to see what answers had emerged to this question by others, and add some more of their own.

Then the tables voted for the five top ideas on the lists that had been created by earlier people at that table, and the scribes then reported these back to the whole group. The result was a broad range of people's views on how they saw a better future for the town.

The next step was for individuals to write on Post-it stickers the five projects or initiatives they personally believed would achieve that success, and after sticking them to the wall these were organised into theme areas such as Health, Education, Environment, Community Spirit, Business, Transport and Communication.

Finally people were invited to write on sheets of paper which of these themes they would like to be involved in and to what extent. The results were lists of people prepared to explore initiatives and project ideas further.

This long-term visioning process, which will take many months and maybe years in some topics, aims to draw out from all members of the community their thoughts about what success for Motueka will mean to them in the future.

This was just the first of a range of meetings and community engagements, of various formats, which Vision Motueka will organise or facilitate over the next few months. Some of these meetings may be run by people other than Vision Motueka workers, but it is hoped that all results will be fed into a single pool for action.

Our Town Motueka is also actively looking at futures with their own members, and there is bound to be lots of collaboration between our two groups into the future.

The teams will be working to elicit and record the opinions of business leaders, older residents, schools, environmentalists, community groups and other sectors, to ensure that the factors which go into shaping the town's future are representative of the whole community. Some people prefer different formats of engagement than the cafe-style format used this week.

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