Colourful flags designed by Fiordland College student, Nina Menegatti-Zink, will soon grace the main streets of Te Anau and Manapouri.

The flags were originally introduced as one of the recommendations of the Town Beautification Project started many years ago but they needed to be changed every few years due to wear and tear.

“Our old Christmas flags were getting a bit tatty and needed replacing and the [Fiordland Community] Board’s decision was to go to the community for design,” chairperson Sarah Greaney said. “This is the first time we’ve done it. In the past all the flags were standard, off-the-shelf designs.”

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The Community Board invited Fiordland College students and the two local art groups, the Fiordland Arts Society and the Manapouri Art Group, to provide design ideas for the flags. Their brief was for “a new range of flags which would be used to make our town more attractive and vibrant to visitors during the summer months”. The design subject was to be “Themes of Fiordland” and the brief was for them to be “Impactful – noting sometimes simpler is better”.

Fiordland College art teacher Rebecca Straker-Cunningham said she received the brief just before lockdown and thought it would make a great lockdown project for her student.

“Nina’s designs met the brief. They were simple yet effective and they link our community to Fiordland,” she said.

The Fiordland Community Board members were very impressed with Nina’s designs. 

“By way far and ahead her designs were the best and they were very transferable to a large scale print. When we got it, we knew that was it,” Mrs Greaney said.

The winning designs portray New Zealand native birds combined with Maori motifs.

Nina's original designs. PHOTO: Alina Suchanski

Initially Nina produced two designs, but was asked for more, ending up with five unique drawings. 

On Thursday (December 3) Sarah Greaney brought the flags hot off the printing press to Fiordland College for Nina and her art teacher to see.

Nina (who has just turned 13) said she was “ecstatic” to see her designs printed as flags.

“It was so much fun doing something that would be displayed in town for all locals and visitors to see. It gave me a real feeling of achievement,” she said.

The board has invested about $20,000 into a new flag system that does not require a cherry picker to put them up. The flags will go up before Christmas with 17 flags displayed in the main street of Te Anau and six in Manapouri.