Puke Ariki library is celebrating 20 years in its current location. Mikaela hitches a ride with Te Waka Puka Puka / the Mobile Library bus in the company of the knowledgeable Walter Crawshaw. In this episode we meet booklovers in New Plymouth’s urban retirement villages (part 1 of 2).

Assemblage artist Carl Fairweather and painter Erryn Willcox run the South Taranaki Creative Space in Hāwera and art classes for adults and children. They’ve recently finished a community mural for the new cultural centre building site.

Check out the Toi o Taranaki Ki Te Tonga indigenous women’s exhibition in the ART space in June. Artists: Maria Brockhill, Tania Niwa, Charlotte Graham, Melanie Yazzie, Vanessa Edwards, Ashlee Robinson and Gabrielle Belz. This is a taster for the upcoming Kahui Mareikura Indigenous Sisters exhibition at Percy Thomson gallery in July.

Mikaela caught up with Elaha Soroor at WOMAD this year, where Elaha performed with London-based band Kefaya. A traveller of Hazara heritage, Elaha wants to share the folksongs, culture and language of Afghanistan’s people with the world. All the songs in this episode feature Elaha Soroor, incl ‘Charsi’, made famous by folk musician Mir Maftoon.

Textile artist Alice Cowdrey specialises in needle felting and runs workshops under her Folk Felt name. Her work tells stories that draw on her Eastern European ancestry, myth, spirituality and queerness.

The Disability Arts question the limitations society puts on people’s bodies and minds. Janet Price talks about equitable access, her advocacy for disabled artists and how to get artists and galleries to consider how they display their work to make art accessible for as many as possible in our community.

Marilyn Rea-Menzies is an amazing tapestry, painting, drawing and mixed-media artist. Her work has been commissioned for Government House. She is currently showing work at the blue studio gallery in Opunake; the exhibition ‘Extinction is Forever’ ends on 29 May.

Alice (Te Āti Awa, Taranaki) is a scholar, writer and a finalist in the Ockham Book Awards with her first poetry collection Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised. Alice shares insights into her journey and an unpublished poem especially written for Taranaki.

Films and the upcoming film festivals at the Len Lye Cinema are the focus this week. Mikaela talks to cinema programmer Alastair Ross about the difference between arthouse films and blockbusters, and what makes a film memorable and Alastair shares some favourite music - with a film angle, of course.

Historian Dr Rachel Buchanan (Te Ātiawa, Taranaki) talks about Te Motunui Epa, a finalist in the Ockham Book Awards for illustrated non-fiction. Carved between 1750 and 1820, buried in a Taranaki swamp, illegally sold and smuggled offshore in 1972 - the story of the five epa features kidnapping, ransom payment and high-level politics that changed international law on the protection and repatriation of stolen cultural treasures.