Jill Walker

The creatives’ creative who’s transitioned  from accountant to doyenne of the arts

Working with creatives isn’t easy but it sure is rewarding. 

If anyone knows the reality of that statement it’s the woman who made it. That’s Jill Walker, the creatives’ ultimate creative.   

She’s been the doyenne of the local creative arts scene for four-plus decades and despite Covid’s restrictive clutches, mutterings about retirement and burnout she remains committed to all things artistic, be it static or interactive.

Thankfully so, Jill Walker is invaluable to Rotorua. Pulling the plug on her passion and boundless energy would be akin to depriving the Energizer bunny of its batteries and the local arts scene of its most ardent advocate. 

Name a local creative project and the odds are that Jill Walker’s been its driving force. She’s equally committed to the environment, issues involving women, young people and the increasingly pressing matter of social responsibility.

In 2017 she was invested with the Queens Service Medal (QSM) for her services to art and children. 

The preceding year she was named a local hero, a category of the Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year awards. There have also been a slew of other community-related recognitions.

Jill’s not one to brag about them, she’s the type who says they honour the people she’s been involved with. This is someone whose enthusiasm for a project inspires others, creative collaboration is her modus operandi.

Bonding with fellow creative 

Throughout her Rotorua years she’s worked in tandem with fellow creative Brian Potiki, her partner for 40 years. They celebrated that relationship milestone only weeks ago. 

They met when she was attending a hui in the early 1980s at the then Waiariki Community College, the forerunner of today’s Toi Ohomai. She was tutoring at the Waikato Institute of Technology (WIT) at the time.

“Brian was brought in to play the guitar and sing for us. He was a musician, actor involved in Maori theatre, writer and a poet.”

His day job was at the museum. Jill considered him her kind of guy, he considered her his kind of girl. They bonded personally and professionally, have produced two daughters and never felt the need to marry.

They’ve performed together countless times, firstly as the The Republicans - Music With A Radical Beat. Their storytelling duo, The Travelling Tuataras, followed and it is now entertaining a second generation of followers. 

As modern day players they’re the equivalent of yesteryear’s troubadours or Shakespeare’s wandering minstrels.  

A couple of years before they met Jill had bought a bach at Rotoehu.

“When I bought it I hadn’t spent much time in Rotorua, apart from a 6th form stay at the Keswick camp.” 

It’s been the pair’s permanent home base since they joined forces, living elsewhere over the earlier years of their partnership.

They share almost every aspect of their lives. That said, there’s a notable exception. Brian doesn’t “do” interviews.  He was invited to take part in the one on which this profile is based but he’s resolute – no way Jose.  

 Even the proffered sweetener that his participation could potentially bring a sales spike for his newly-launched pocket poetry book, exile on tombleson road failed to tempt him.

He happily leaves it to extroverted Jill to  speak for them both. 

She’s a great conversationalist but that compliment comes with a caveat. Any chat with her is inevitably random, she’s a grand master at wandering off topic and on to unrelated tangents.

Not that we’re complaining, it’s an endearing trait which makes her the ‘one-off’ person she is. Ask her to define herself and her response is “that’s a hard one.” Too right it is. 

Early beginnings

 Like her conversations Jill’s growing up years were all over the place. Her dad was a principal at small rural schools, a role that took his family on a geographic tour as he moved from the South Island’s west coast to Portland near Whangarei.

By the time his daughter reached high school he was based in the Waikato, consequently her working life started in Hamilton.   

Risible as it may now seem for one so embedded in the arts, her first career choice  was in the far more pedestrian field of accountancy.

She has a genuine affinity with figures and considers working with them equally as creative as all branches of the arts.  She’s developed workshops for small businesses and translated the language of accountancy into “plain speak.” 

Her number crunching teeth were cut at a Hamilton accountancy practice.  

“When I went there from school one of the first questions they asked was ‘how long are you going to stay before you get married?’ I started at the same time as three young men who didn’t get asked that, I stayed longer than they did.”

Jill remains miffed by that question. It was in the early days of the women’s lib movement and sparked the latent feminist within her.

Apple picking recalibration

With her Association of Chartered Accountants (ACA) qualifications in the bag she became a cost management tutor at WIT.

To Jill it wasn’t a place to follow the  accountants’ accepted drab dress code.

 “I’d turn up in the sort of overalls you buy at Farmlands, working boots and a silk blouse.” That’s non-conformist Jill to the nth degree

At WIT she found her dream mentor in her department head, Neil Reddy.

His daughter is the recently retired Governor General, Dame Patsy Reddy.

“When I got my QSM I was able to tell her that her father was one of the most influential people in my life. He’d send me around the country to work with boards, organisations like Road Transport and on projects assisting young people. If you were good at something he’d say ‘go and I’ll support you’.” 

Despite her fondness for figures and the latitude Reddy gave her at WIT, she became restless, kitted out a camper van and took time out to go apple picking at Motueka. She used the season to recalibrate her life’s direction.

Performing and the arts had begun to beckon, she’d been keen on art since childhood.

“I was always drawing, painting, sketching, my sister and I were involved with murals. A lot of the art I’m really interested in is outdoors, I just totally love being in that space.”

Art wasn’t her only creative skill; so too was music.

“Singing was a big part of our family, we performed with our cousins. I always seem to be the one in the front of family photographs.”

Back in Hamilton she returned to WIT part time, working in community development while nurturing her natural-born talents. She was already immersed in the folk scene.

On the move benefiting others 

This preceded the time Brian entered her life. They hadn’t been together long when they moved with his then six-month-old son, Tarawera, to live in the Hokianga and work on the marae where Brian had previously been involved in Maori theatre.

Jill also led pre-employment programmes (PEP) for young unemployed Maori at Kaikohe's polytech.

“We came back here [Rotorua] when Tarawera was about two.  “The next two years gave us the chance to develop our individual theatre skills.”

During this period Jill worked with Welfare State Theatre, a visiting UK community theatre company.

“I was learning the way to bring community stories alive through singing, music, street art and story telling.These are skills I‘ve been able to pass on to schools, towns and festivals nationwide.” 

The duo returned north as the birth of their elder daughter, Hira, approached. “I wanted a home birth which wasn’t available here so we went back to the Hokianga. The birth was actually in the hospital but it had all the atmosphere of a home birth.”

They were contemplating a move to Brian’s tangata whenua (ancestral land) at Bluff when a call came from a trustee of Parihaka, the pacifist  Maori settlement  in Taranaki sacked by British troops in 1881 and its land controversially confiscated. He invited them to come and live in an abandoned house and work with “lost souls.”  

“The land had been used as an Ohu [communal living space], when the members left it was gifted back to the original owners’ descendants. 

“We became house parents to a group of young men sent by the courts who’d   otherwise have gone to borstal or a boys’ home.”

Living conditions were, to put it mildly, basic,

“There was no electricity, no running water, we collected firewood. I was washing nappies in a bucket, we made our own bread and did all the cooking over a camp fire.

“It was my learning time, that sometimes it’s not about me but about the greater good of the wider community. That’s very important in these Covid times.”

Their work done they continued on to Bluff, jointly founding a community Peace Group theatre. 

Jill ran business, creativity and early childhood courses.

After a year they were enticed to Christchurch where Brian led creative arts courses. Second daughter Huanoa was born there

Returning home, performing offshore 

“By the time we came back to Rotorua we had gathered a lot of tools. We reconnected with the Polytech, ran workshops and theatre-related work in high schools.

Jill immersed herself in the women’s studies programme and ran courses relating to the poly’s early childhood degree.

In 1990 she was one of the founders of Waiariki Art Workers Community Trust (WACO).

“We became part of a community art workers network that set us up to host international touring troupes.”
It inspired the couple to take their own performances on the road and offshore.

“We’ve been to India, Australia, the Cook Islands twice sharing our art and skills to bring local stories alive. 

“I have always believed if you do good stuff things come back to you, if you need an answer to something it just pops up.  It’s like when I said it would be lovely to go to the Cook Islands again and two weeks later we were invited to do work in schools there with puppetry.”

Jill’s role spearheading local arts-related events has always been turbo-charged. That was until the global pandemic arrived, drawing the curtain on the majority of public performances and exhibitions.

She acknowledges she and Brian have fared better then many others.   

 “We are very lucky that we’d started to get superannuation when Covid happened because it has really affected our ability to work.”

However the couple still perform as community artists when they can.

 “It’s a good career if you love art and people. It’s a good way to contribute to the world. I’d love to see more people taking it up, unfortunately there aren’t a lot of young people coming up.”   

Jill Walker  - arts career   

The Travelling Tuataras with Brian Potiki

 Travelling across Aotearoa and offshore, bringing stories alive to communities, bucket drumming, sky art,  fabric&paint, shadow puppets, wind sculptures   

WOMAD world music festival, Taranaki 2003-2010

Auckland’s Aotea Centre First Light New Year’s family celebration,  2000-2007 

Performance adventuring with local early childhood centres, children’s libraries

Solo highlights

Katikati Primary open air art, We Live Here Too  

Events under the stars and moonlight 

Rotorua lantern festivals

Rugby World Cup  2011, facilitating Rotorua Entertains, programme training more than 100 bucket drummers, stilt walkers, face painters, street performers 

Community street banner projects 2004-2012 

Children’s Day at Redwoods, 2006-2020

Rotorua Safer Families Network, 2008-2010

Collaborative artwork for Christmas Float Parades 

Trail of Poppies, Anzac Day community art installation, 2016

Involvement in developing council’s initial arts and cultural policy, creation of community arts advisor position, Children’s Art House    

Arts Village since inception

Attending Festival Mondial des Théâtres de Marionnettes de Charleville-Mézières, France, 2015.  

**** This is the final In Profile in the introductory series