Practice Foundations is a monthly public sector community of practice hosted online by The Auckland Co-Design Lab and Healthy Families Far North.

Practice Foundations focuses on the opportunities and challenges that exist across the public sector. In our sessions we explore topics, tools and resources that public sector practitioners have told us are the most useful in building practice and tooling them up for implementing complex and ambitious work.


Most of our sessions are recorded. You can find the recordings, and any accompanying slide decks, resources and shared links, below.

The Lab Team The Lab Team

Tangata Whenua, Tangata Moana, Tangata Tiriti and the Vā space with Shane Ta’ala Tangata

Nau mai haere mai to this Practice Foundations Session Tangata Whenua, Tangata Moana, Tangata Tiriti and the Vā space with Shane Ta’ala, Principal Design Advisor Māori, within Insights and Statistics at Statistics NZ. As a thought leader within the organisation, his role is to advance iwi-Māori data aspirations through data system architecture design that enables a mutuality between Te Ao Pakeha and Te Ao Māori through Te Tiriti o Waitangi. 

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The Lab Team The Lab Team

Iwi-led Systems Change with Eruera Tarena

Tokona te Raki uses social innovation to achieve equity in education, employment, and income for all Māori in the Ngāi Tahu takiwā, and beyond. They are unweaving broken systems, imagining new horizons, driving systemic change, and empowering rangatahi Māori to lead long-term structural change to address challenges at their root cause. Eruera shared insights and learnings from Tokona’s approach to iwi-led systems change and how they are growing indigenous people, practices and tools for long-term transformation.

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The Lab Team The Lab Team

Hautū Waka 2023

Nau mai haere mai to this session of Practice Foundations where we used Hautū Waka to help us to navigate ourselves forward in complex systems. Hautū Waka is a navigational framework rooted in mātauranga Māori and a tool for navigating the complexity of systems to build intergenerational equity and wellbeing.

The Hautū Waka framework has been developed by Roimata and Ayla Hoeta, guided by Matua Rereata Makiha. Roimata Taniwha-Paoo took us for a pipi dive into the practices and tools of Hautū Waka. This session builds on last years.

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The Lab Team The Lab Team

Whakapapa-led Design with Karl Wixon

Karl Wixon specialises in envisioning, codesigning and achieving positive futures through thought leadership, strategy, change, design, growth and innovation. He brings a marriage of commercial, creative and cultural acumen to all he does and is frequently called on as a skilled facilitator to weave together complex collaborations spanning cultures, sectors, entities and interests to develop shared visions, find direction, and codesign solutions.

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The Lab Team The Lab Team

Te Tokotoru

Te Tokotoru is a systems approach to wellbeing, developed alongside whānau and rangatahi. It provides a different starting point for designing and investing in equity and intergenerational wellbeing. It is being used in different government settings like Te Aorerekura to enable a shift towards strengthening and healing.

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The Lab Team The Lab Team

Shifting the Food System

The Healthy Families South Auckland team is working with many of Auckland Council’s services to help local government promote health and wellbeing. One project has involved helping Auckland Council ECEs and after-school programmes to provide children with better access to good food. In this Practice Foundations session, Winnie Hauraki, Manager of Healthy Families South Auckland, will share how she and her team worked to make these shifts in the system, the approaches they took, and the challenges they faced.

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The Lab Team The Lab Team

Whānau-led Design: What Does it Actually Take?

He Whānau Whānui o Papakura (HWWoP) is a group of whānau residing or connected to Papakura, leading an innovation process focused on thriving futures for tamariki. Supported by Papakura Marae and The Southern Initiative (Auckland Council), HWWoP has been working with local agency leaders to design and test local prototypes that are strengths-based, values-led alternatives to current service and programmes models.

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Holly Davies Holly Davies

What’s the Mauri of the System?

In this Practice Foundations session, Dickie Humphries will lead us through some of these questions, based on his own experience of responding to these same questions in his practice. He will introduce concepts and tools from Moana Nui, and reflect on practical and real-life lessons from his work in indigenising systems.

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Holly Davies Holly Davies

Before (and after) Co-design: A View from Te Ao Māori

When we think of co-design, we often land directly in the doing of the co-design with communities. However when communities think of co-design, they are often thinking also of what comes before (co-governance, for example) and what comes after, such as co-evaluation).

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