The word ‘Cul­ture’ means many dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. To us it means doing things that enrich the mind to make your­self into a more inter­est­ing per­son. And luck­i­ly for us, there are many fan­tas­tic places in Welling­ton in which to get enriched.

My cul­ture fix­es are prin­ci­pal­ly deliv­ered by:
Nom­i­nees after the jump…

WINNER!!!
A. The Film Archive

A quick trip to the Film Archive’s web­site should be a pret­ty com­pre­hen­sive clue as to what a valu­able role the archive plays in keep­ing our cul­ture alive: you can view L&P ads from the ’70s online! But even bet­ter than that, they reg­u­lar­ly show New Zealand movies on their big screen for a measley $8. As they say:

The New Zealand Film Archive has three prin­ci­pal functions—to col­lect, pro­tect and project New Zealand’s mov­ing image her­itage.

This means that unlike some oth­er repos­i­to­ries, they do their very best to make their con­tent acces­si­ble. Pop into their cafe for lunch and catch up on old episodes of Short­land Street. Check out their mul­ti­me­dia exhi­bi­tions. Or even just enjoy the Supreme cof­fee and their sta­tus as a CafeNet hotspot. There is noth­ing dusty or stuffy about this archive.

B. TheNewDowse

Because of Stage­coach’s spon­sor­ship of the Becom­ing Kong exhi­bi­tion, they ran a deal where you could get a free ride back to Welling­ton by bring­ing in your bus tick­et. Have you ever caught a bus to the Hutt? That’s a lot of cul­ture trapped in a small space right there. We jest a lit­tle, but it’s true that the New­Dowse’s stun­ning archi­tec­ture, cre­ative arty exhi­bi­tions, and cut­ting-edge craft shows seem a lit­tle out of place in our stereo­type of the Hutt. Where are the hold­ens? The tight black jeans? (Oh wait, they’re on Cuba Street now). Expe­ri­enc­ing new cul­ture is all about broad­en­ing your mind, and by help­ing us see that there’s more to the Hutt, the New­Dowse ful­fills our cul­ture require­ments very nice­ly.

C. Moore Wilson’s

Some of us wor­ship in may church­es, but oth­ers of us wor­ship at the foot of mounds of shiny fresh veg­eta­bles. We oggle gigan­tic wheels of cheese, and plan cock­tail par­ties with the abun­dant selec­tion of strange spir­its. We try to con­vince our­selves we need new kitchen gad­gets, or that it’s total­ly jus­ti­fi­able to buy kilo bags of hun­dreds and thou­sands. Moore Wilson’s con­tri­bu­tion to our cul­ture can per­haps be best summed up by this annec­dote — when insane amounts of rain washed out eft­pos all over the coun­try on Decem­ber 23 2005, the already man­ic pre-Xmas crowds meant that the check­out line for Moore Wilson’s Fresh snaked all the way around the entire store and out the door. It took an hour to work your way through the line, but it was a sur­pris­ing­ly pleas­ant hour, because free sam­ples of breads and choco­lates and veg­eta­bles and cof­fee were clev­er­ly passed around by the knowl­edge­able staff, cre­at­ing a jovial atmos­phere and difus­ing a poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion. Now that’s our kind of cul­ture.

D. “Outside”

Half of the Welling­ton­ista run a sports site called the Drop­kicks (maybe you’ve heard of it?), while the oth­er half think that a gen­tle cir­cu­la­tion of a cock­tail shak­er is about as much exer­cise as any­one should get. Luck­i­ly there’s this place where the two fac­tions can meet, and that’s the great out­doors. And we don’t mean tramp­ing in the wilder­ness, oh no. Instead, we can play petanque in Wai­t­an­gi Park, cock­tails in hand as long as it’s not Thurs­day-Fri­day-Sat­ur­day (damn that liquor ban!). We can per­am­bu­late along the water­front or stroll on the beach­es, and enjoy a good cof­fee at the same time. We can play hop­scotch out­side the Film Archive, soak up the views on Cuba Street, or lis­ten to birds singing. It’s nice out­side. Care to come for a stroll with us?

E. The Paramount

A reoc­cur­ing theme in decid­ing how cul­tur­al a place can be is to con­sid­er its many uses, and giv­en all the things that the Welling­ton­ista do at the Para­mount, it’s a top con­tender. We go to reg­u­lar movie screen­ings there. We dis­ap­pear for weeks at a time into its con­fines when the Film Fes­ti­vals are on. We oggle Magen­ta Dia­mond’s ta-tas appre­ci­ate the artistry of bur­lesque. We attend Ponoko unveil­ings, Mini Web­stocks and oth­er launch­es there. We go there just to drink on the bal­coney. And we love that it’s an old, old build­ing, but it’s so well suit­ed to so many mod­ern pur­pos­es, and that while it still retains its old glam­our, they’ve final­ly put in some com­fy seats in the main the­atre!