Village market logoI know we make fun of the Hutt (except for the ‘ista mem­bers who actu­ally live there and really quite like it, of course).  We tease it and call it names, sim­il­ar to how we might treat a sib­ling, but just like our pain in the ass older broth­er, when they do cool things we get to be proud of what they’ve done and imme­di­ately get cool by asso­ci­ation status, because we’re all fam­ily, really. Except for Churton Park. No one is related to Churton Park.

And this time is no dif­fer­ent.  If you see me in a reas­on­ably dodgy indus­tri­al estate part of Lower Hutt next Sat­urday Octo­ber 11, you’re not to pan­ic and think I’m lost (although I do inev­it­ably get lost pretty much every single time I go there).  I’ll be there for the open­ing of The Vil­lage Mar­ket.

Wel­ling­ton is known for its very cool mar­kets selling lots of food and pro­duce, but when it comes to a true artis­an mar­ket that cov­ers this, crafts and preloved goods – well, there’s a bit of a gap.  That gap has been filled by Laurie and Jo Sanders (fath­er and daugh­ter) who recently bought a plot of land next to the old Griffins fact­ory and have been quietly beaver­ing away build­ing a per­man­ent mar­ket oper­at­ing through­out the week­end on Fri­day nights, Sat­urdays and Sundays.

image of old billboards used as skins
Recycled bill­board skins

I’ve been told some of the stalls have been built from recycled pal­lets and made to look like mini shops.  They’ve used recycled bill­board skins as weath­er pro­tec­tion, so you can still go to the mar­ket in awful weath­er and know that the sellers won’t be hav­ing a ter­rible time with all their stuff get­ting wet.

There’s a build­ing being ren­ov­ated right now with space for artists to sell their work, where chal­len­ging weath­er would cause ser­i­ous dam­age to their wares.  If you’ve got kids, you’ll be pleased to know that at the end of that build­ing, Laurie and Jo are also cre­at­ing a zone for par­ents to go to feed their babies (breast or bottle) and with a kit­chen and real bath­rooms nearby, pre­par­ing bottles and chan­ging babies is easy. (Wait, do par­ents actu­ally change their babies? Like swap them with anoth­er baby they think is pret­ti­er? I guess this is why I am not a par­ent)

All aboard the jigger train!
All aboard the jig­ger train!

The idea is that vis­it­ors will hope­fully come for a few hours rather than just a gro­cery grab as there’s plenty of live enter­tain­ment, a jig­ger train (I googled it, and it’s a hand-oper­ated cart, much beloved of slap­stick old timey flicks) and bikes for kids to play on and great susten­ance avail­able.  They want it to be an evolving mar­ket, so there’ll be some­thing new to see every time you vis­it.

The Vil­lage Mar­ket open­ing week­end is on Sat­urday 11th Octo­ber and Sunday 12th Octo­ber from 9am-3pm, then every Fri­day night from 3pm-11pm and Sat­urdays and Sundays from 9am-3pm.  Vis­it thevillagemarket.co.nz for more inform­a­tion.