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!