Jacqui Taylor: Energetic promoter of Motueka's business and community

December 13th, 2011
By David Armstrong

By the time this article is published, Our Town Motueka manager Jacqui Taylor will be on a well-deserved holiday, having spent around 150 hours organising and putting together yet another excellent High Street Starlight Parade.

We managed to grab an hour of her time last week as she wound down the show, taking care of the inevitable administrative loose ends that arise from running a $11,000 event that attracted about one-third of the population of Motueka to mix, laugh and cheer on the main street.

And her holiday can't last long - her next job is "getting the ducks in a row" to prepare for the Motueka River Raft Race on February 6th, another of the major happenings organised by the events arm of business promotions group Our Town Motueka.

It's all part of Jacqui's quiet determination to play a greater role in the community which she grew up in. Now in her fifties, Jacqui was raised in the lower Motueka Valley, just up from Woodlands Corner, and was the next in a line of Taylors who farmed tobacco, hops and dairy in the valley and pioneered several community activities such as the A&P Association.

She loved her years at Motueka High School, though more for the social and sporting activities than academic achievements. But she did well enough to train as a kindergarten teacher in Wellington and then on to teach for a two bonded years in Hawke's Bay.

Then, around 1977, it was time for the big OE and Jacqui took off for Perth, where she mixed casual work around West Australia with sightseeing and holidays. Then there was a spell in England doing nannying and other jobs to pay for a living.

On the way back to New Zealand and normality, she stopped off in Perth again where she was offered a job as a field officer for Red Cross. This involved lots of travel around West Australia for five years, speaking and raising money in businesses and schools. She was also involved in State Emergency Services (the equivalent of Civil Defence here). Looking back, these jobs doubtless set her up with the skills she is applying now in Motueka.

"But much as I loved Perth, its social life and the beaches, I grew to miss the small town environment and the nearby mountains, so I came home," she recalls.

By this stage she was about 28, and she moved back into kindergarten teaching at Stoke and then Greenwood Kindergarten in Motueka, where she still helps out occasionally as a reliever.

But Jacqui was still not really settled, and for some years she travelled again - to Perth and then a mining town (working in a bar), then a ski resort in Victoria and finally back to New Zealand to work with a Canterbury ski club and then teaching in Queenstown for a couple of years ("because by then I'd got into skiing a bit").

"I got to like seasonal stuff - working and skiing - and a job came up in Motueka with Wilsons Abel Tasman when they got their new boat, so I ended up crewing on The Explorer and guiding in the Abel Tasman," she says. The fact that her father was ill and needed care helped her decision to return home as well.

She resigned her teaching job and for a few years she did the winter/summer seasonal work thing in Queenstown (a rafting company) and Motueka (Wilsons). She decided to "make a proper job out of all this" and went to Nelson Polytechnic to study the Adventure Tourism course, but found that being an adventure guide wasn't going to be quite the thing for a person of her ... ah, more mature years.

But she managed to get a job as a part-time Community Recreation Officer for the Motueka Recreation Centre for three years, which required her to run programmes for school holidays and older adults. She also filled in some extra hours as deputy dog ranger for TDC.

In the late 1990s this led to a job with Sport Tasman in Nelson with the title of Active Living Manager, providing "programmes and recreation for all sorts of people, including a little recreation group in Mapua, which is still going," she adds.

Eight years ago she heard that Our Town Motueka's manager was leaving. She thought, "that sounds like a job that I might be really interested in", so Jacqui offered to run the 2003 Starlight Parade to see how she would manage before formally applying for the position.

"It all came off. I probably learnt a few things in the process. Margaret Ewers, who was the Our Town chairperson then, was a huge support, and is still a bit of a go-to person for me."

Jacqui was formally appointed as OTM manager early in 2004 on a 28-hours-a-day basis, which produces its own personal financial challenges. Relieving kindy teaching sometimes helps a bit.

Jacqui says that, after many years of moving around and trying various shorter-term ways of making a living, she has now chosen to stay put in what is to date here longest ever period of employment in one job.

"I chose to come back here firstly because I was tired of all the travel but also because my dad was not very well, and I thought it was better to be around here. Sure, the job attracted me and it gives me a base income, but I guess it's just the time of my life when you think, it's nice to be part of your own community and feel like you're doing something useful in it."

Jacqui is reluctant to put herself forward in her public role - getting her to agree to this interview took several attempts and approaching the point where bribery may have become necessary. "Initially I did struggle in the job with the public identity thing. Being the face of the town centre organisation is not something I like to put myself forward in. But Howie [Timms, OTM chairman] is a very amiable and good front person."

Her work as manager of OTM primarily involves talking and networking with about 300 businesses in the town, running the office and "keeping the administrative wheels turning". There are committee meetings to run and promotions such as Top Shop to organise; funds to apply for and sponsors to approach to run the major events such as the Christmas parade and recently resurrected raft race.

Jacqui has the satisfaction of seeing Our Town Motueka growing stronger in recent years. It is well known that it has struggled in the past to rebuild after a recess, but now has a busy committee with some good ideas being expressed through sub-committees.

"Bearing in mind that you're working with a volunteer committee and new members coming on all the time, to achieve things you really need some continuity because you can't change the focus each year. It takes a lot of time to achieve some things. You do need a long-term vision and strategic planning.

"Sometimes people make criticisms and we have a knee-jerk reaction to them, which may not be helpful and may use up scarce funds. When you have people on the committee for a longer term it's easier to achieve the longer-term goals."

She is well aware that many business people and residents have previously made some great contributions to Our Town Motueka or its predecessor Mainstreet Motueka. "Some are still beavering away behind the scenes for the greater good and some feel it is time to let some different folk step up, which is understandable.

"Often I realise that some of the initiatives and attributes of Motueka are of their doing and have been the result of long term effort, and while it is great to have some new blood and new ideas come into the mix, knowledge of the history and relevance to the place is helpful in getting things moved forward or not."

Jacqui believes there is a core of forward-thinking people with progressive ideas and energy in town, but "it's hard to keep up that level of energy if you don't get support [from the business community]. Sometimes there's a level of support that you require to push ideas forward, but unless you have a bucket load of money or a lot of willing people to get involved, it's not going to happen. All these people have their own businesses to run as well, so they need support from others to get things done."

Jacqui gains strength by going to national conferences of similar 'Our Town' bodies and seeing how they work on improving their own communities. But often, she says, it's not best to try to copy what works elsewhere but instead to work on your points of difference.

"But something that blows me away at these conferences is that I hear people presenting from towns that don't have the fabulous beaches and the laid-back lifestyle that we have and are struggling economically, and they've done amazing things with fewer resources. And we're sitting here on this total goldmine and it's almost like we're a little bit complacent sometimes. We can't sit back and whinge about not doing so well, because we're in the most fantastic place in the world."

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