Toi Moana Bay of Plenty Regional Council was named the Indigenous – Māori category winner at the 2025 Excellence Awards (formerly Core Values Awards) for Consulting with Bay of Plenty Māori On Te Mahere Tūroa.
The project focused on engagement with Māori for Te Mahere Tūroa, Toi Moana’s Long Term Plan 2024–2034. Early guidance from Māori councillors and tangata whenua helped shape the consultation and engagement approach from the start.
For engagement practitioners, the case study offers four useful lessons: start with the right guidance, meet people in the right ways, reduce barriers to participation, and build understanding before asking for feedback.
1. Start With the Right Guidance
The case study highlights the value of early guidance from Māori councillors and tangata whenua in shaping the engagement approach.
That matters because meaningful engagement with Indigenous communities cannot be designed from the outside and added in later. It needs to be shaped with the people, relationships and cultural knowledge connected to the place.
A useful question for practitioners is:
Who needs to guide the engagement before we decide the method?
2. Meet People in the Right Ways
Toi Moana used a range of engagement methods, including kanohi ki te kanohi face-to-face meetings with Māori councillors and rangatira from iwi, hapū and Māori land trusts.
The project also included presentations to co-governance forums and tangata whenua forums, as well as online workshops for each constituency.
This mix is worth noting because participation is not one-size-fits-all. Good engagement gives people different ways to understand the issues, ask questions and contribute in ways that work for them.
3. Reduce Barriers to Participation
The case study also highlights practical choices designed to make participation easier.
These included holding a hearing on a marae and creating a Friend of the Submitter service to support first-time submitters or people with limited capacity.
For practitioners, this is a useful reminder that barriers are not always solved by more promotion. Sometimes the better question is:
What support would make it easier for people to take part well?
Our Inclusive and Accessible Engagement Position Paper makes a similar point: accessible engagement means using appropriate tools, providing support and giving people options to participate.
4. Build Understanding Before Asking for Feedback
The engagement approach included online workshops to help build understanding of the consultation questions and key issues for Māori in the region.
That is a simple but important practice lesson.
If the topic is complex, people may need time and context before they can provide considered feedback. Engagement is not just collecting responses. It is helping people understand what is being asked, what can be influenced and why their input matters.
Read The Case Study
Toi Moana’s award-winning project offers a practical example of Māori engagement shaped by early guidance, relationship-based methods and participation support.
Watch the Interview
