The Auckland Arts Festival was one of the first major arts events that took a a huge financial hit when Covid-19 struck. But, undeterred, the organisers have pivoted like crazy to come up with a programme for 2021. The theme is "Aroha" and all 70 plus events in the programme are homegrown: The Artistic Director of the 2021 Auckland Arts Festival Shona McCullagh talks with Lynn Freeman about what happened to the 2020 programme back in March.

After decades of the so-called "brain drain", as New Zealand's best and brightest headed off to pastures new overseas, this year saw a sudden reversal. They call it a Brain Gain, as the Covid-19 pandemic encouraged many expats to come home. This weekend saw a rescheduled Big Screen Symposium arranged by Script to Screen. And in it, a panel of returned screen professionals shared their stories with an audience, and generated a discussion about how best to use the skills they've brought back with them. Lynn Freeman talks with agent at Karen Kay Management, Rosie Carnahan-Darby, Australian writer/director Gregor Jordan of Ned Kelly and Buffalo Soldiers fame, and recently resident in LA, and producer Polly Fryer working from her home in Auckland.

A teacher who helped to shape the NCEA secondary school Drama curriculum - and fought to have it included as a NZQA subject - is about to retire after more than 40 years. David Chambers was appointed Christ's College's first Director of Drama in 1998. He's produced more than 100 shows and plays over the years and was recently honoured as a Life Member of Drama NZ by his peers. He also sees Drama as offering students essential skills to help them in the workplace, including communication, teamwork and empathy. Lynn Freeman asked David Chambers when Drama went from being an outside activity, to a subject within the school curriculum.

Photographs of the inhabitants of Stewart Island/Rakiura taken during the Covid-19 lockdown - snapped from a distance but still revealing - have been published in a new book. The photographer is artist Lairka Purik, originally from Estonia. But now it's the bush, birdlife and people of Rakiura that she explores in her paintings, drawings and photography. Lynn Freeman met Lairka at her home which is nestled in the bush, a place she thinks of as paradise. Her book is called Copeisolation, and she's working on her first solo exhibition to be held on Rakiura/Stewart Island next year.

A te reo Maori poetry film has won top prize at an international competition in Ireland. "Noho Mai" was a collaborative effort by the co-directors, writer Peta-Maria Tunui and audiovisual creative Waitahi Aniwaniwa McGee. The film is filled with imagery of flight, Maori culture and of Aotearoa's landscapes. Lynn Freeman asks Peta-Maria and Waitahi just what it was about their film that caught the attention of the prestigious Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition in Cork, Ireland.

It's almost 20 years since the last significant survey show of contemporary Maori art. But Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki has taken up the challenge to represent 70 years of work from the 1950s till now. Most of the gallery has been handed over to the curator of Toi Tu Toi Ora: Contemporary Maori Art, Nigel Borrell and he's gone for it! More than 100 artists are represented, with some of them taking on their most ambitious work yet as commissions for the show. The work is woven around the Maori Creation story - in artforms that range from body adornment, clay making and painting, to digital media and multi-story-high art installations. Lynn Freeman asks Nigel Borell how much has changed in the contemporary Maori art scene since that last survey show two decades ago.

You'd think online sites like Trade Me and Facebook Marketplace would have marked the end of interest in op shops and dealers in all things retro. But it's not so. Rose Jackson and her partner Matt have travelled the country visiting second-hand shops at more than 380 cities, towns and suburbs around Aotearoa. They've listed the shops on their website Collectors Anonymous, just in time for Christmas - but only after calling them all back to make sure they survived the lockdown period. Rose tells Lynn Freeman that the secondhand book and record stores, vintage and retro dealers and op shops she contacted are thriving.

To say Sam Neill has had a busy year is putting it mildly. He opened 2020 playing Phil O'Brien as guest star on Matinee Idle. After that, he shot off to the UK as a rather better paid guest star on the blockbuster Jurassic World. And then Covid happened. You'd think that would be the end of Sam's year - but he became an online sensation in his enforced downtime. As well as short films with ropey continuity, and poetry readings in his own unique style, he also managed to pick up a gong - rather a classy one. Sam Neill, Icon of the Arts Foundation. Oh, and he topped the box-office at home two weeks in a row with the hit movie Rams. Sam is currently locked down in Auckland and joins Simon Morris to talk about a surprisingly busy 2020.

For those of us listening to hourly bulletins throughout the year the statistics from the pandemic began to blur. It's hard to put the numbers into perspective. Hundreds of thousands of deaths, thousands of new cases being reported every day in specific countries and states. That fatigue is difficult to fight but it's important to remember that all of the international covid situations are life or death on the ground. To try and make sense of the numbers in a way people can comprehend Wellington composer and performer Daniel Beban has written a new work interpreting the numbers in music. Daily Deaths translates the numbers in each country by pitch and volume, with different instruments representing individual countries. It was first performed three months ago. But it's been updated, and will be played on Saturday at the Futuna Chapel in Wellington.

Sometimes it feels like authors are in a race to see who can write the longest novel. In the age of Christmas market doorstoppers it can come as a relief to encounter a novella. You don't see novellas in the new releases list much anymore, but one this year has burst onto the bookstore shelves and shows that if you can tell one story well, the readers will come. I Wish, I Wish by Zirk Van Den Berg is set in mortuary centred around a mortician who has slowly forgotten how to live. The novella was written in English, originally published in Afrikaans and then republished in New Zealand in English by Cuba Press.