COME TO YOUR SENSES
Books are only part of the story at Tauranga’s brand new library and community hub.
WORDS HAYLEY BARNETT
He Puna Manawa, Tauranga Library and Community Hub.
As the highly anticipated new Tauranga Library and Community Hub gets set to open its doors on October 16, it’s not just book lovers who have something to look forward to.
“For people who maybe reading books isn’t their thing, these other experiences mean everybody’s included,” says Joanna Thomas, Tauranga City Council’s manager of Libraries and Community Hubs. “It’s a place that every family can go and have an outing and create a memory.”
One of those other experiences sits on the first floor, the same floor as the children’s and youth spaces, where things get loud. It’s a soundproofed sensory room with blackout blinds and a wall built for projecting colour across it. When you turn everything up, it hums with lights, texture, vibration and sound. Turn it down and it goes almost silent.
The sensory room.
Joanna says the idea goes back to 2017, when the Council first consulted the community on what a library and museum in the city centre should look like. Families were already asking for something like this. They wanted somewhere neurodivergent kids and adults could go that wasn’t a school or a hospital.
“There wasn’t anything like that that was open to the public,” says Joanna.
One of the people who pushed hardest for it was Joanna’s colleague Michelle Anderson. “She’s been a great inspiration for all of the development,” says Joanna.
The council ran workshops with stakeholders, including Tauranga Special School, CCS and Parent to Parent, to work out what the room needed to do.
“Parents and caregivers who book the room will have exclusive use of the space to meet their children’s needs,” says Joanna. “They’re not out in an open space where it can be quite distracting.”
Joanna Thomas.
Adults with disabilities and their caregivers have the same option. The library runs sensory storytimes too, creating a safe welcoming environment where kids can explore stories at their own pace.
Funded fully by Lottery Grants, the room will be free and booked in advance, and a short induction will be included so everyone knows how to use the equipment safely.
He Puna Manawa, the new Tauranga Library and Community Hub, will open with a dawn blessing, followed by a community celebration day on October 17, with open sessions for the sensory room and tours through the rest of the building.
The sensory space is small, just 5.3 by 6.5m2, but it’s doing what Joanna set out for the whole building to do. “Not everyone who comes through the door is just here for the books,” she says. “Now there’s somewhere for them too.”