Mīria George (Te Arawa, Ngāti Awa, Tumutevarovaro, Enuamanu) and Hone Kouka (Ngāti Porou, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Kahungunu) are both acclaimed, experienced writers and directors in theatre and film in their own right. 

Collectively as partners in work and life they are the founders and producers of Tawata Productions, providing a platform for Māori and Pasifika artists for stage and screen.

Arts News - Sunday 1 September

What happens when you fund 10 artists a part time wage - a universal basic income - for an entire year, to help facilitate change within their community across an entire region? 

 

Over 2022 and 2023 arts agency Creative Waikato trialled such a project. Whiria Te Tāngata, was given $630,000 from the Manatū Taonga Ministry of Culture and Heritage’s Innovating Aotearoa fund.

A documentary exploring a region’s worth of wellbeing by Dan Inglis premieres in Kirikiriroa Hamilton on Monday night and Whiria te Tāngata has also been the subject of a positive Social Impact Report by Australian specialist consultants Huber Social.

Writers, poets, musicians, artists and storytellers have descended on Otautahi Christchurch this week for the Word Festival. More than 100 guests have been taking part in sessions across venues in the city from the 27 August to 1 September.

Every week on RNZ’s Culture 101 we explore the cultural richness of this country by catching up with a local in a place, big or small.  

There’s no better demonstration of that richness than the cultural scene over-the-hill, top-of-the-south at Tākaka in Mohua, Golden Bay.

Remember making dioramas with pen and card in shoeboxes as a child? 

As a quick survey of German artist and writer Antje Damm’s instagram will attest, Damm creates a world of hand-cut wonder with tiny dioramas constructed in matchboxes. 

It began with architecture and shoeboxes. At home with children after a professional life as an architect, Damm turned her 3D modelling skills to constructing cardboard dioramas to photograph, as illustrations for books she wrote for her four girls.

While festivals around the world have been either cancelled or scaled back, Electric Avenue in Ōtautahi Christchurch is doing the opposite.

It may be true that the most exciting place at a flat party is the bathroom. Private, yet not so private. 

In a queasy bravado move for local television, that bathroom over one long night is the setting for the entire first episode of second series of comedy Not Even.

This year marks 25 years since the Aotearoa band Stellar exploded onto the music charts in 1999 with multi-platinum album Mix.

Arts News for 25 August 2024.