7 July, 2026

Jo Holsted: Helping connect the Devonport community

Well connected… Jo Holsted in the Devonport Community House hall

Jo Holsted’s background in community access radio has provided a great basis for developing her role as Auckland Council’s “Community Connector” for the Devonport peninsula.
Holsted spent 13 years at not-for-profit Auckland radio station Planet FM, first as a technical producer, then in community liaison. She also chaired the national Community Access Media Alliance.
Helping community groups and individuals make their own radio programmes was good preparation for the connector role she has held since 2024, aiming to help people in the community fulfil their aspirations.
She is based mainly at the Devonport Community House but works out of the Rose Centre on Wednesdays. The work is very community led.
“Where we fit in is helping build capability and capacity for the community,” she says. “It potentially covers a lot of ground.”

Attaching the roles established by council in early 2024 to community centres (another connector is based at Sunnynook Community Centre) was an acknowledgement of the community infrastructure already in place.
Holsted says it has also been important to build on existing relationships through the centres and then extend the outreach. “A level of trust needs to be established. You get to know people walking in the centre doors and what they do and vice-versa. Word spread and now people come looking for me at the Rose Centre or Devonport Community House.”
A good example of her work was the combined haka by hundreds of local school children from across the peninsula on Windsor Reserve to help launch Māori Language Week last year. When a local group wondered if such an event might be possible, Holsted jumped at the chance to make it happen. “That’s what is special about the role. It’s being able to lift those things from people to say, ‘here’s what I can do’. Haka-Up was a really beautiful example.”

This year Holsted approached all nine peninsula schools to design a star to be included in the Devonport Business Association’s Matariki Star Trail.
It isn’t all about new initiatives, though. Holsted is supporting perennial happenings in the community too, such as the recent Devonport Mid-Winter Dip and the Devonport Peninsula Senior Forum.
She is also enjoying providing one-to-one support to individuals in the community.
With so much online interaction these days, Holsted emphasises the positives of people meeting face-to-face rather than from behind the safety of a keyboard – even if “hot topics” can seem to create a charged atmosphere at times.
She says community engagement has been a recent topic under discussion among members of the Senior Forum. “It’s something we’re still in conversation about.”