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?