Leading from the front issuu

chapter twelve
Napier pilot city
trust —
FOR A KINDER, FAIRER CITY
Napier Pilot City Trust, the PCT — it’s a name many
people in Napier have read about and heard of
for nearly 40 years. The trust has been driven by
Pat, the city’s mostly popular, indefatigable peace loving
activist and his many foot soldiers over the years, as a
vehicle for hope. The trust’s essence, it’s kaupapa, is to
inspire the delivery of kinder, fairer attitudes and policies
to those in need of them and inspire positive alternatives
to handling violent crimes.
The birth place for the trust was the Hawke’s Bay
Community College (HBCC) back in the late ‘70s. This
new college was a hub for innovative thought and inspired
change and leadership. At the time it had government
support to initiate and implement an enlightened
blueprint for a new education model based on principles
of fairness and inclusion that would encourage people
to engage with the college, who previously felt alienated
and intimidated by such places of learning, and it was
successful in this.
Under the stewardship of social anthropologist and
educator, John Harré and his keen team of educationalists
inspired by the movements of social change of the
day, this institution was anything but staid, it was revolutionary.
It held a forum in 1977 to address social issues
and invited leading practitioners and academics who
seized the day and the opportunities to suggest a fresh
approach. Current models of law, order and incarceration
weren’t working and a new way needed to be found.
With government support at the time for their vision,
people like Pat, with not just dreams but strident desires
to see a healthier community, were to see their visions
become reality. At the forum, the now late Dr John Robson
uttered the phrase “Napier — the one place to offer
hope”. This had a profound impact on Pat. He grasped
that phrase, seared it across his heart. He then set forth
to spread the possibility ever since, and captain the Pilot
City Project.
In 1983, under a Muldoon National Government (a socialist
in a blue suit?) ,the Department of Internal Affairs
funded a study of the Pilot City concept and in January
1986 Napier was designated by Ann Hercus, the then
Labour Minister of Police and Social Welfare, as a Pilot
City for the study and implementation of positive alternatives
to violence. Mana from heaven, things were rolling.
Researcher Bev Barron was appointed and work got
under way on Napier’s trail-blazing “social experiment.”
Opposite: Pat doing what he does best, leading from the front and bringing the people along with him. John Wise is the artist, a long
time colleague of Pat’s from way back in the earliest days of the Hawke’s Bay Community College and the seeds of the Pilot City;
Above: John Robson. Through John’s inspiration and involvement with the Napier Pilot City Trust, a collection was opened in his honour
at the former Napier Public Library by mayor Alan Dick and John Harré. The collection is now available at the new Napier Library.
Napier Pilot City Trust – for a kinder, fairer city 109