In Wel­ling­ton, which con­tin­ues to be the cul­tur­al cap­it­al, no mat­ter what Auck­land might try to pre­tend, there are prob­ably a lot of con­ver­sa­tions to be had about Boos­ted, which was set up by the Arts Found­a­tion as a rewards-free Pledgeme, or anoth­er tax-deduct­able Givealittle, except that they take a cut. Nat Tork­ing­ton’s thoughts might be the start of that con­ver­sa­tion, or they might not. But we’re here today to look at ador­able kids, and Bret McK­en­zie, and Taika Wai­titi in famil­i­ar loc­a­tions, doing their best to drum up sup­port for the open­ing of the New Zea­l­and Fest­iv­al (formerly and gen­er­ally still col­lo­qui­ally known as the Inter­na­tion­al Fest­iv­al of the Arts)

In short, Drum Up Sup­port needs to raise $25,000 to bring kids from across New Zea­l­and to Wellington’s Civic Square for a huge drum­ming extra­vag­anza called The Big Bang, which will kick off the 3 week arts Fest­iv­al in style on 21 Feb­ru­ary 2014.  200 stu­dents are being trained by Strike Per­cus­sion as part of Strike’s award win­ning Bat­ter­ie 100 pro­gramme which does amaz­ing work teach­ing per­cus­sion and per­form­ance in schools across NZ.   The 200 young people will per­form with 300 sing­ers from com­munity choirs and spe­cial guests to be  announced. The Boos­ted cam­paign runs for 90 days.

Cur­rently they’re at 5% of their tar­get. Wanna help them out?