With Firth NZILA Wānanga 2026 getting closer, the shape of the two days in Ōtautahi is becoming much clearer.

Some parts of the programme will already be familiar if you’ve been following along. Others are newly confirmed. Together, they’re building a Wānanga that moves between big-picture thinking, practical experience, challenge and conversation.

At the centre of it all is Ka Rū Ka Hā | Awaken the Energy: not only asking what needs to change, but what we might do differently as a profession, where we can have greater impact, and what happens next.

What becomes possible when we broaden how we practise?

Four speakers. Four perspectives. One question sitting at the heart of the conversation: Where can landscape architects have more influence, and what becomes possible when we broaden how we practise?

Zach Barker, Joshua Joe, Hugh Smith and Dave Little will each bring a short provocation from a very different part of practice.

The conversation will move across community regeneration and whenua, people and digital tools, innovation and client relationships, and the increasingly important challenge of understanding and accounting for landscape emissions.

Rather than four mini conference papers, these are ideas to open things up: different ways of looking at where landscape architecture could go next, and what becomes possible when we stretch beyond familiar ways of working.

Influence beyond the profession

A new session now confirmed for Friday takes that conversation another step outward.

Influence: How do we turn expertise into action beyond our profession? brings together Dr Antony Shadbolt of Christchurch City Council, Dr Jessica Halliday of Te Pūtahi Centre for Architecture and City Making, and Professor Bronwyn Hayward of the University of Canterbury.

Landscape architects already contribute to some of the major issues shaping Aotearoa, including climate adaptation, biodiversity, infrastructure, community and the future of our towns and cities.

But expertise alone does not create influence.

This conversation will look at how issues and ideas become visible, how specialist knowledge connects with wider audiences, how relationships and coalitions are built, and how change happens both within and beyond institutions.

At the centre is one question: What can landscape architects do, individually and collectively, to build a stronger voice in the decisions shaping Aotearoa?

The session will be a conversation rather than three formal presentations, drawing on the speakers’ different experiences across public systems, ecology, city-making, civic participation, climate, democracy and community engagement.

Out into Ōtautahi

And for anyone who missed the field trip announcement earlier, Thursday afternoon takes the Wānanga out of the conference venue and into the landscapes of Ōtautahi.

Delegates will head out on five very different experiences:

• Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor, exploring the City to Sea Pathway and the evolving relationship between river, city and red zone
• Te Kuru Wetland, looking at a major stormwater and ecological landscape on Cashmere Road
• Te Nukutai o Tapoa Naval Point, including the latest stage of redevelopment at Whakaraupō Lyttelton Harbour
• Parakiore Recreation and Sport Centre, offering a look at one of the city’s major new public projects
• Marokapara endures & flourishes, exploring landscape, memory and regeneration through key central-city places including Margaret Mahy Family Playground, with both walking and accessible bus-based options available.

The field trips are not an add-on to the programme. They are another way of having the same conversations, through place, projects, people and what is happening on the ground.

Two days built around conversation

Across the Wānanga, those sessions sit within a much bigger journey.

Alison Page brings an international perspective to the opening of Ka Rū Ka Hā. Hirini Matunga asks us to think deeply about place, people and practice in Aotearoa. Sibyl Bloomfield opens up the question of what an Aotearoa practice actually looks like. Field trips take those ideas out into Ōtautahi, while later conversations turn towards influence, systems, advocacy, adaptation and the role landscape architects can play in the decisions shaping our communities.

It is deliberately not two days of people simply presenting finished answers.

The Wānanga is about ideas worth discussing, experiences worth sharing and questions that might shift how we think about our own practice.

And increasingly, the question is not only what needs to change, but what happens next.

Ka Rū Ka Hā | Awaken the Energy
Firth NZILA Wānanga 2026
5–6 November 2026
Majestic on Durham, Ōtautahi Christchurch 

Tickets are available now