Counter Narratives

I am obsessed with food and the stories that come with it. I eat first and ask questions later. It’s been this way since seven, when my mum caught me stealing scorched almonds out of the fridge. After struggling to get all the ingredients for American hotdogs ready at once as a teen, I trained as a chef and worked for places like Sky City Observatory, Iguacu, and Butlers. Later, I retrained as a photographer and spent over a decade in fashion and portrait work.

Now, among other things, I write about art and culture. Food, images, and storytelling have always been my language. I feed on stories as much as dinner. Either way, I’m greedy: more recipes, more butter, more crumbs, more gossip.

This project needs your support to get started.

Counter Narratives is about turning that hunger into something bigger: a kaupapa-based photo and interview project documenting the meals, stories, and people that shape everyday life in Ōtautahi. We’ll be showing up in people’s homes with a camera and an appetite because food calls people in, and right now we need those connections more than ever, when life feels rushed, people are disconnected, and kitchen knowledge is slipping away.

As a child, it felt magical when my grandmother made boil up in a pot big enough to cook me in, and the entire whānau would somehow appear like there was a neon sign above the house flashing “pork and pūhā.” Food is the great connector. It gathers us, feeds us, and tells us who we are.

You can help by backing this project. Your support will let us start collecting stories and recipes that often go unheard outside the family. If donating isn’t possible, you can still be part of it: tell a friend, share the campaign, every share gets us closer to another kitchen table.

This only happens if we reach our target. Every dollar up to $3,000 is matched by Boosted Ōtautahi, doubling your impact. The more we raise, the more kitchens we can visit. And honestly, we need this, we need to cook more than the three fallback meals we keep recycling.

It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.

I’m Hayley Walmsley, a 42-year-old mother of a 20-year-old dude who sadly does not like food. You know the type: “chicken nuggets and pizza are my whole personality.” I, on the other hand, am obsessed. I work as an artist, writer, curator, and unapologetic chaos goblin with a camera. My practice lives in the spaces where everyday life and cultural memory collide, where spilled tea, family gossip, and cultural inheritance all matter.

By day I work as an administrator at Ilam School of Fine Art, but my practice as an artist, writer, and curator is what drives me.

I studied at the Dunedin School of Art, completing both my undergraduate degree and a Master of Visual Art. I’ve curated large collaborative exhibitions (including Migratory Patterns at CoCA), exhibited nationally at Tūhura Otago Museum, Studio One Toi Tū, and The Moray Gallery, and presented internationally at ISEA 2024. My major solo projects include I’m Not Dead Yet (2018), Suzie No Friends (2019), and Are You Still Talking (ongoing).

I also write. Recent and forthcoming publications include Where is My Seat? (Browntown, Vol. 1, Aug 2025), The Places We Carry: Tūrangawaewae, Ahi Kā, and the Politics of Belonging (Scope: Tirou, Nov 2025), and Emiemi: E ngā Timokamoka ki te Tātai i te Ara Nukunuku — Mapping Migratory Patterns through Whakapapa, Place and Home (Scope: Art and Design, Nov 2025).

I’m the Director of Provocation Station, a kaupapa-based arts platform where I publish critical and creative writing. My series Feral Truths and Tangled Threads shares the same mix of honesty, humour, and cultural reflection that drives Counter Narratives.

For Counter Narratives, the “team” is everyone: the people who open their kitchens, share their stories, and all of you who donate, participate, and spread the word.

To make Counter Narratives happen, I need your help. This is an all-or-nothing campaign. If we don’t reach the target, the project doesn’t go ahead (and I’m not that popular, so help a girl out).

Every dollar you give is matched by Boost Ōtautahi up to $3,000. That means a $20 donation becomes $40, a $50 donation becomes $100, and we can stretch this project twice as far.

Here’s where the money goes:

• Ingredients and meals: because kai needs to be cooked, eaten, and shared.
• Photography and interviews: time, travel, editing, and all the behind-the-scenes mahi.
• Production costs: preparing the stories and designing them to share online.
• Participant engagement: cups of tea, returning printed portraits and recipes to participants, and keeping the cycle generous.
• Gear and incidentals: memory cards, batteries, hard drives, and the random things that always come up in real kitchens.
• Platform fees and contingency: so nothing gets derailed by hidden costs.

And here’s me being clear. I’m calling on all my friends, whānau, colleagues, neighbours, and the people who only know me because of “the soup.” If you’re reading this, I’m asking you to back me. Throw in a fiver, a twenty, a hundred. Share the campaign link. Help me spread the word.

If we hit the $3000, the project doubles thanks to Boost Ōtautahi, this shows in real time on the donations so we always know where we stand. If we miss it, it all disappears.

Food is never just food. It is inheritance. It is survival. It is memory and joy. It is culture, whakapapa, and resistance.

Counter Narratives is a kaupapa-based photo and interview series centred on kitchens, recipes, and the deeper stories we carry with our kai. Each instalment will include:

• Kitchens as they are: clutter, crumbs, mismatched plates, spills and steam included.
• Cooking and eating together: documenting the process of making a recipe and sitting down to share it.
• Stories on the table: conversational interviews about what food means — home, memory, migration, identity.
• The recipe itself: so the knowledge can be shared, not hoarded.

Right now, the focus is on gathering. This Boost Ōtautahi campaign will fund the first wave of visits, conversations, and meals. I’ll fill out the roster with cool people and their favourite recipes, meet them in their kitchens, and share the food and the stories that come with it.

All of this will grow into an online archive of documentary-style stories, weaving together photos, recipes, and conversations. Longer term, the material may also develop into a book or an exhibition, but at its heart Counter Narratives is about sitting down together, sharing kai, and keeping those stories alive.

Food is never just food. It is culture, whakapapa, and survival. It is memory, gossip, grief, and joy served on mismatched plates. The kitchen is where people show who they are, without polish, without PR.

Counter Narratives matters because these stories often never get told. We hear a lot about “fine dining” and celebrity chefs, but not about the curry your mum made every Sunday, the boil up your nan swore healed everything, or the flat stew that kept a whole house alive during broke weeks. This project is about honouring the knowledge that lives in everyday kitchens, and treating it like the inheritance it is.

The urgency is simple. These stories live in people, not in books. If we don’t sit down together now, recipes slip away, memories fade, and voices go quiet. Gathering them can’t wait.

Backing this campaign means:

• Preserving recipes and stories before they are lost.
• Valuing the wisdom of people who are not usually asked to be “the experts.”
• Giving communities a platform to tell their own food stories in their own voices.
• Building a body of work that says ordinary kitchens matter.

And here is the selfish part. If we do not reach the target, none of this happens. The stories stay untold, my friends (who are forever asking for my recipes) do not get their next one, and I will still be haunting your kitchens anyway, except without the nice photos to show for it.

If we do make it, the impact doubles. Every single dollar is matched by Boost Ōtautahi up to $3,000, which means twice the stories, twice the recipes, and twice the crumbs for me to sweep off my camera.