I'm an Anglican priest. I came to Christchurch in 2002 to be the Dean of Christchurch and I was the Dean at the time of the earthquakes. I got involved in the red zone when asked by Tom McBrearty and Evan Smith if I would become patron of an organization called CanCERN. After the earthquakes, I was Councillor for Burwood Pegasus, which is part of the red zone, for a couple of years. Since then I've become patron of the Avon Ōtākaro Network. I also ran a little organisation called Eastern Vision. How did you get involved with organisations like CanCERN during the earthquakes? I remember going to a meeting after the September 2010 quake, I think in the Oxford Terrace Baptist Church. Tom McBrearty was there, and Evan Smith. I was really fascinated by Evan's presentation that nothing was happening in terms of involving the local community on the ground. It was all coming from the Council and the chief executive, very much a top down business, and it felt very not right. Evan talked about his particular philosophy of bottom up work in terms of letting the people decide. It was about then that I came across the saying that the wisdom of the local community always exceeds the knowledge of the experts. I thought this was a wonderful statement, and used it many times. Then next, there was a knock on my door in the Dean's office in the Cathedral, and in came Evan, Tom and Leanne Curtis. They asked if I would be patron of CanCERN, which was the group that formed out of the meeting that we'd had at the church. Clearly, being the Dean, I had some status in the city, and that was one of the reasons I became a patron. It was the brainchild of Evan, but Leanne and Tom were terrific too. I attended the meetings that CanCERN was having, mostly in Wainoni Methodist Church. Many community groups and others were sending representatives to these grassroots meetings, looking at the issues and planning the next steps. I think many local associations had been a bit moribund, so this put life into them, and new groups were forming all the time. We saw ourselves as engaging with the city and the City Council in particular. It became a voice for those groups particularly after the February earthquake. I remember earlier having a meeting with Bob Parker, the Mayor, to say that we are representing the people, and you need to listen to us. But mostly they didn't have the interest or energy to listen. So there was this emptiness, and as I said, top down feeling around the place. Tony Marriott tended to rule with an iron rod as the Council chief executive. But we did get some traction with Bob. And then with the February 2011 earthquake, I got very involved, and was often in the news alongside him, as a kind of voice not just for the church, but largely, in a sense, for the city. I was involved with the government emergency centre that was set up and worked with the people doing urban search and rescue, and those sorts of things. Then CanCERN really took off after, after the big February earthquake. I don't think the Council or its staff were very much engaged with the city. I was getting in and out of there because I was the Dean, but they weren't very welcoming to any CanCERN people. And then John, the head of Civil Defence came and took over. One of the things we complained about before he did was that it seemed that new portaloos were being put up in nice places like Fendalton, and not much was happening in the East. And the spots where you could empty the things were not very well done. I met John because we wanted CanCERN people, like Evan and Tom and Leanne, who really knew the grassroots stuff, to be part of the conversations. After that the whole thing took off. It was brilliant. In time, Leanne and Brian, in particular, had picked up the role of working with people in terms of issues with insurers. They set up their own organization, which came out of CanCERN. Leanne was amazing and still is doing very good stuff. It became quite radical really, and then got caught up in a larger network of people taking on EQC. I think Leanne is still doing that: it’s called Breakaway now or something like that. And what was Eastern Vision? During all that time, Evan had been working with Mark Gibson, the Methodist minister in New Brighton. I wasn't really part of setting it up, but the Avon Ōtākaro Network (AvON) came out of this. I ended up going to a lot of their meetings, and there was a little bit of division amongst them, but Evan was clearly a core person holding it together. And I sat down a couple of times with Humphrey Rolleston. And also an architect, because I was saying we need to develop an understanding or a vision for what we want to do in the East, not only for the next two or three years, but for the next 50 years. Humphrey was saying the same thing. As a result we set up Eastern Vision. It didn't have a particular mandate from anybody. There were just a few of us. I called meetings together; Councillors would come, and we had some of the Community Workers from the Community Boards, and local people. Initially the Council people weren’t engaging very well, but by the time Regenerate Christchurch was set up [in 2016, with a mandate to develop a regeneration plan for the red zone], they’d got the idea that we do this by listening and talking and getting the community involved. How did the group come together? I knew Humphrey – he was a canon armourer of the cathedral, , and as the Dean, I got engaged with these sort of business-type things, because I thought it was important. He was clearly concerned about the East. He had that view and I had that view, as did the architect. I remember we sat in Pomeroys and had a long conversation one weekday. And that's how it started. It developed, in a sense, an importance it didn't deserve, because we didn't do a huge amount of stuff, but the concept was right. And it sort of kind of linked in to what AvON and Evan were on about. Evan didn't have a lot to do with it, but we used the name as a means by which you could get access to deputations. And I used it, both as citizen and as a Councillor at the time. What about your time on the City Council? I had two years as a City Councillor. That was an interesting time and I should have done another term, but I didn't. I resigned as Dean in early 2012 because I'd fallen out with Bishop Victoria. I'd been at a protest meeting along River Road, where Mike Coleman had been speaking and Chrissie Williams was there. She didn't know I'd resigned, I don't think, but she sidled up to me and said, ‘I resigned from Council’. I said, ‘Really?’ because she'd been a very good Councillor. And that got me thinking, and I thought, maybe there's something I could do there. I talked to other people like my friend Gary Moore [Mayor from 1999 to 2008], and decided to stand for Burwood Pegasus. It was the area I was engaged with: CanCERN was largely involved in the East and Burwood Pegasus was the main Council ward there. So it was very much about the East and the red zone. I was elected quite substantially at a by-election as Chrissie had resigned. Then I did two years on Council. I'm really quite good at mixing and mingling with people and building pretty good relationships. Being on the Community Board for Burwood Pegasus was fascinating, and getting involved in all that stuff. It was highly political as was the Council itself: Bob Parker really wasn't a team player, and Tony Marriott certainly wasn't. And there were a group of young turks who'd come onto the Council at the election around about the time of the September 2010 earthquakes, and there'd been no real induction at that time. I came in later, of course, but with still no real induction. So the issues about corporate responsibility, confidentiality, etc were not well held by some of them, and that gave, to my mind, Tony Marriott the opportunity to really outflank the Council. There were big issues between us as a city and central government. Gerry Brownlee [Minister for Earthquake Recovery] and I crossed swords a few times while I was on the Council. I remember having a bit of a stand up with him. He came only once to Council that I remember, and it seemed to me that he was highly critical of us; he basically told us off. And I said, Gerry, you are the governor of the city, from the government's point of view. We're the governors of the city, from the city’s point of view. And it seems to me that we as governors should be meeting regularly to discuss issues of policy and about being good governors. But we never meet with you: you won't meet with us. And he was pissed off about that. I got to know him quite well in the end. He wanted me to be on the Community Liaison Group in CERA [Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority]. But Bishop Victoria had other ideas. I knew Roger Sutton [CEO of CERA]. I'd been a mentor for him when he was working with Orion, and met with him a few times. I got on well with Warwick Isaacs, who was involved in the central city plan on behalf of CERA. I remember walking around the city with him several times. I think Roger was very badly treated personally in the issues that happened, getting rid of him. Good man, very good man. And he worked hard for the city, but I think, like the city ourselves, we were working against Wellington, and that was very tough. But it was a good time. And I actually do wish I'd done another term on Council. It would have been fun working with Lianne [Dalziel, elected Mayor in 2013]. I got involved with the whole gamut of Council activity, and trying to see that local community voices were being heard. Liaising, of course, with my colleagues in the East - Evan and so on - and being a voice in whatever way I could be for their concerns and issues. I became quite close to Tim Carter, who was real thorn in the flesh of Bob Parker. And I found working with the Community Board somewhat frustrating. Most of the Boards had a couple of community advisors paid by the Council. Overall, I don't think they were very much use. It was hard to get those people in support of community concerns which could be at odds with where Council staff or policy was coming from. I admired those who did, because often we Councillors were finding ourselves at odds with staff. I certainly did quite a lot. Tony Marriott had a view that no Councillor should talk to staff. You should only talk to the heads of departments and directors. But I went wherever I wanted to go. Tony was difficult. In fact, I chaired the review and employment committee that went through the process of his exit. Now I look back with hindsight, I should have done another term. Why did I stand down at the time? Well, I think part of it was my kids were saying, Dad, it's time to be a granddad. I would have been in my mid 60s then and longevity is not in my family history. It was said in The Press that it was because I didn't like all the paperwork. I don't know where they got that from. There's a lot of paperwork but I didn't mind it, but one of the things I did feel strongly was that Councillors need to look at splitting the paperwork between them. I thought it'd be better if we focused on key portfolios, and do it that way. So while all that was going on, CanCERN was beginning to fall away. Evan became more involved in AvON. We engaged with the head of planning at the Council; we had a good relationship. So when decisions were being made about the red zone, it was useful for Evan to have me as a Councillor, and then after that, still involved in those discussions. Around about 2015, I left Christchurch and did a locum up in Auckland, and then came back and was asked to be Dean of Taranaki, which I did for two years until 2018. So I was out of it for that time. And during that time, Evan was doing his thing: we owe a huge amount to him. What have been the positives with your involvement with the East and the red zone? I think many positive aspects, really. Some extraordinary friendships, and to discover just how capable and invested people are in their own communities. And the courage that many of them have taking on the bureaucracies. To have some friends at court was useful. When Lianne [Dalziel] became Mayor, she lived in the East. She’d been the MP for the East. She understood the East. She had a different style to Bob Parker, a different voice. Maybe she worked better with Gerry [Brownlee], I don't know. Anyway lots of good things, lots of opportunity came out of that. And I think if you look at the red zone now, the work that Evan did in particular helped turn what had been a place of chaos and pain and hurt into a place now of hope and regeneration and a place of honour to leave a real legacy of hope for the city and for the people in the East. When Regenerate Christchurch was set up [in 2016] to produce a plan for the red zone, it seemed to us that the people running Regenerate [Ivan Iafeta, its CEO] had really understood that the local community, the grassroots people are the people who should be giving you the way it goes. The people who were working with Regenerate had a much closer, warmer view and a more thought through view of realising that it's the local community. The Regenerate plan is a very good plan. And it's been tinkered with now, and of course, that'll happen. But the top-down thing had been shifted. I was in Taranaki by then, but things were changing, and the Council was becoming more involved. After the quakes, it wasn't very long before we at CanCERN certainly, and AvON, recognised that basically Christchurch is a group of villages, each with their own sense of being. They were different, and we need to honour that. And we need, as we think about the future, to be looking at ways in which we can build on these networks of communities. That's the kind of stuff that Eastern Vision put out. That's what the Avon Otakaro Network stood for. I’m still patron of AvON, which remains deeply committed to a legacy for Evan, a man who had been a champion for the East. I think Hayley [Guglietta] in AvON now is carrying on that work very, very well. And I think we can look back at all what's going with satisfaction overall. There's still this struggle going on to set up a viable, governance group for the river corridor. But the concept of it as co-governance, truly a co-governance model, is terrific. And while Māori and us work in different ways, I think we must get there. It’s a real contrast to the up-down way of control and dealing with things in the first few years after the earthquake that was so deplorable. And I think we did a bloody good job, thanks to Evan and many others I was working with, to challenge that and to change that. Yet I tend to agree with, I think, Anake Goodall who said we're making a very good job of building a great 20th century city. I think we could have done things a lot better: in some ways, we’re not brave enough. You’ve talked about building platforms, acting as a voice, communicating vision, ideas. Are those the messages you’d give to other places that might find themselves in similar situations? Absolutely. I think, always, for local communities to begin to realise the strength they have, the opportunity they have to be a voice for their people. I really do believe in that phrase, the wisdom of the local community. And getting the powers that be to believe that is the issue. The problem is that most people, when they get into so-called power, in some ways, you become a servant of the institution, rather than the vision that you're there for. I mean, a lot of people in local government are like that, and many institutions, the church is one of them, where you get caught up in it and you forget what you're really there for. That's not what we should be doing. We should be serving the vision that we've been put there for. So if I can do a little bit more of that in my doting towards my 80s, that'll be fine. And I’ll try not to get too het up about it. Interview with Eric Pawson at Avebury House, 3 September 2024

I'm the Member of Parliament for Wigram, first elected in November 2011. For the first six years, I was an opposition Labour MP. Although not in my electorate, the red zone was very much a Christchurch issue, and with my Christchurch MP colleagues, we were considering what Labour would do if it got into government in regard to the red zone. Then in November 2017 Labour formed a government, and I became the Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration. So that started a pathway of having a far more formal relationship with the Residential Red Zone and statutory obligations there as well.

At the time of the earthquakes, Sarah was involved with the New Brighton Project. She is one of the earliest and now longest-serving executive members of the Avon Ōtākaro Network (AvON), in the roles of Secretary and Treasurer. She also had responsibility for AvON’s Mahinga Kai Exemplar project alongside Anzac Avenue in the Burwood part of the Avon Ōtākaro river corridor. She is heavily involved in the city’s Food Resilience Network and the development of its hub at the Ōtākaro Orchard on Cambridge Terrace in the central city. The hub also sits on the Avon Ōtākaro river.

My background is in ecology. After Honours at the University of Canterbury, I completed a PhD at Otago under the well-known ecologist Sir Alan Mark on alpine plant ecology. My first real job was with Grasslands Division of DSIR in Southland and then I moved to Botany Division, DSIR in Lincoln, which became Landcare Research, Manaaki Whenua. I'm now a research associate there and have adjunct appointments at both Canterbury and Lincoln Universities. I’m involved with multiple NGOs through Christchurch and beyond, including as chair of the trust that runs the New Zealand hub of the iNaturalist app.

Tanya has been involved in a number of community initiatives in the river corridor since 2011. Since mid-2018, she has been the manager of Avebury House - a heritage community facility owned by the City Council, run by a trust, alongside the river in the Richmond red zone.

Lianne was a Christchurch Labour MP from 1990 to 2013, and a Cabinet Minister in the Fifth Labour Government. She resigned from Parliament in 2013 to run as Mayor of the city, serving three terms in this capacity. Upon completion of her third term in 2022, she became co-chair of the new Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor Co-governance Establishment Committee.