BEAT dinner series is bimonthly dinner with access to sensational food and stimulating conversation. BEAT believes that every conversation counts and works to create inviting contexts that foster open dialogue. Each BEAT dinner is hosted at a remarkable Toronto restaurant. A highlight of this event is that a different VIP guest of honour will be invited to each dinner.
We are honoured that our featured guests of the upcoming BEAT Dinner are Elisapeta (Peta) Heta and Jade Kake.
Elisapeta Heta
Elisapeta Heta is an engaged and politically active artist and graduate of architecture. Brought up in Auckland / Tāmaki Makaurau, she was entrenched in the realities of urban Māori and second-generation diaspora Pacific Island families. She is now a Senior Associate at Jasmax, where she co-founded the Waka Maia collective, which works within design teams to embed a Māori world view into design outcomes, to facilitate political and cultural conversations, and to support in the upskilling of the office and its’ understanding of Te Ao Māori (the Māori world).
Elisapeta is interested in how space and place can have a positive impact on the lives of the communities in which they function, and takes every opportunity to mentor, support and run outreach programmes for Māori and Pacific Island youth. She has had significant involvement with many collectives, including Architecture+Women NZ and Ngā Aho – the national network of Māori design professionals. In 2016 she was co-opted to the Board of the New Zealand Institute of Architects to help implement Te Kawenata o Rata (a covenant) between Ngā Aho and the NZIA, recognising Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Jade Kake
Jade Kake (Ngāpuhi – Te Parawhau me Ngāti Hau, Ngāti Whakaue, Te Whakatōhea) is an architectural designer and writer. Through her studio Matakohe Architecture and Urbanism, she works with Māori organisations on marae, papakāinga and civic projects, and with mana whenua groups to express their cultural values and narratives through the design of their physical environments. She lives and works in Whangārei.
Jade is the producer and host of Indigenous Urbanism (available on iTunes and Spotify, or at www.indigenousurbanism.net), a place-based storytelling podcast about the spaces we inhabit, and the community drivers and practitioners who are shaping those environments and decolonising through design. She has written for a variety of housing and architecture magazines and contributed chapters to several books on architecture and urbanism.