2025: Year in Review

2025: A Year in Review – Twenty Years of Living Knowledge (2006–2025)

Executive Summary

In 2025, the Tiapapata Art Centre marked twenty years as a charitable trust (established 5 June 2006), reflecting a sustained commitment to arts education, skills development, and cultural regeneration in Samoa. Over two decades, the Art Centre has evolved into a distinctive learning ecosystem where heritage practice, ecological knowledge, creativity, youth development, and community wellbeing are interwoven.

A defining feature of 2025 was the Art Centre’s emphasis on critical heritage knowledges—understanding heritage not as a static object for display, but as lived practice transmitted through relationships, materials, and place. Throughout the year, the Centre hosted workshops and talanoa sessions that reactivated endangered material knowledge, supported master practitioners and apprentices, and connected community audiences with living heritage.

The year also strengthened the Art Centre’s regional and international profile through media coverage, dignitary engagement, academic partnerships, and the securing of a major international documentation grant through the British Museum’s Endangered Material Knowledge Programme (EMKP), in partnership with the University of St Andrews. Digital heritage initiatives expanded through virtual tours and 3D documentation, while new infrastructure—including a purpose-built Paper Arts Studio, a museum for ancient and newly made cultural objects, and the Kalika Dojo—broadened the Centre’s role as a community hub.

A major strand of activity in 2025 was the ACP–EU supported Living Monuments project, which positioned the Art Centre at the forefront of community-led archaeological and heritage practice in the Pacific. A defining moment was the opening of access to the Tia Seulupe (pigeon-snaring mound) at Pōtini, Sa‘anapu in May 2025, marking a shift toward community-sanctioned access, education, and digital preservation grounded in custodial authority.

Taken together, 2025 affirms the Tiapapata Art Centre as a living knowledge institution: a place where heritage is practiced, taught, researched, and regenerated for the future, while remaining grounded in Samoan values and community authority. READ MORE.