Culture Compass

We’re increasingly getting our cultural engagement through the device in our hand, our souls sucked into the phone and existing there, disembodied, like genies trapped in a digital urn until a human hand gives us a rub or a light jostle and pulls us out because they’re hungry or mad at us or both. But our physical presence at the places where creativity, introspection, profundity and new ideas are being shared is one of the great joys of human existence. The following list of cultural happenings is intended to lure you out of your phone and maybe your home and into the world of arts and culture that continues to thrive in Aotearoa despite all it’s up against.

The Moment I Knew was recently announced as the opening gala night event at this year’s Auckland Writers’ Festival in May. The esteemed panel, who will eloquently muse on a time in their lives when they had an important realisation or epiphany, includes Irish novelist Colm Tóibín, Shakespearean actor Harriet Walter, voice for women’s, queer and Māori liberation movements Ngahuia te Awekōtuku, novelist David Nicholls, spoken word poet Lemn Sissay, Australian journalist Stan Grant, New Zealand novelist Meg Mason and poet Zech Soakai.

This year marks the second under Artistic Director Lyndsey Fineran, who achieved the highest audience numbers in the festival’s history and a 50 percent increase in book sales last year. In the face of concerns about attention-loss and the demise of long-form reading, Fineran has breathed new life into the AWF and secured an exceptional slate of writers including Sir Ian Rankin, Rumaan Alam, Samantha Harvey, Edward Wong, and Becky Manawatu.

writersfestival.co.nz

The brains behind the Hikoi for Health are as literary as anyone on the AWF programme. GP Glenn Colquhoun and general physician Art Nahill are both poets. They’ve collaborated with artist Nigel Brown who has painted a second-hand van that the doctor-poets will traverse the North Island in, collecting patients’ stories and ideas for healthcare reform from communities.

Colquhoun and Nahill have experienced firsthand the failings of our healthcare system and without imminent reform, New Zealanders face a future where access to a GP is no longer a realistic expectation for most people. The hikoi will arrive at Parliament grounds in May to present the collected stories. You can register to share your story or support the hikoi in other ways at healthreformnz.org

New play Love, Mum by Sela Faletolu-Fasi is beautiful and heartwarming but there’s real darkness in this story and it’s resonating strongly with audiences. Inspired by Faletolu-Fasi’s own goodbye letter to her six children, Love, Mum follows struggling Pasifika mothers who join a Mums Anonymous group and through sharing their pain find the community and connection they need to keep going. After seasons at BATS in Wellington and Little Andromeda Theatre in Christchurch, they’re heading to Tāmaki Makaurau for five shows at the Basement Theatre March 25-29.

Two soon-to-be-released local documentaries deserve everyone’s attention. projectfiftyone is made by Christchurch couple Bariz Shah and Saba Afrasyabi who, following the 2019 mosque attack, sought to make a positive difference for their people. Without any filmmaking experience, they traveled to Afghanistan and documented their project to fund 51 micro-businesses in Kabul honoring the victims. Deeply moving and hopeful, it opens in theaters April 3.

The Stolen Children of Aotearoa tells the painfully important stories of children abused while in state care between 1950 and 2019. Told by survivors, the film premieres at the Māoriland Film Festival in Ōtaki on March 28, before launching on Whakaata Māori on March 31. If there were such a thing as required viewing for all New Zealanders, this is it.

Opening at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetū on April 12, Disruptive Landscapes: Contemporary art from Japan is remarkably the first New Zealand exhibition of contemporary Japanese art in twenty years. Curated by Melanie Oliver, the show features moving image and installation works from eight Japanese artists that Oliver handpicked during research trips to Japan. The works are described as both mesmerising and challenging, using landscapes to confront societal norms. On display until August 24.

Seven years after the passing of opera singer and Opera North founder Joan Kennaway, students are resurrecting her passion project Opera in the Garden. Kennaway started community choir Opera North in 1997 with the dream of bringing opera to Te Tai Tokerau. Carrying on her legacy, Maria Satterfield (Kennaway’s student for nearly 30 years) and Emma Couper have fought to keep the choir going and on March 22 will host the first Opera in the Garden since 2019, with special guest Deborah Wai Kapohe.