Tomor­row night at the St Cather­ine’s Col­lege Hall in Kil­birnie, the WCC is hold­ing a pub­lic meet­ing to gauge com­mu­ni­ty opin­ion on the fate of the Maranui Surf Life­sav­ing Club and the adja­cent three water­front build­ings, and to dis­cuss the options.

The Maranui club house is a list­ed her­itage build­ing, dam­aged by fire on 1 August. 

A call has been put out (see today’s Cap­i­tal Times arti­cle) for Welling­ton’s cre­ative types to come and show their sup­port and with peo­ple being encour­aged to come along in their speedos it’s going to be an enter­tain­ing night! 

Who says pub­lic meet­ings can’t be fun!? 

If you’re out of town, you can sign the online peti­tion here to restore the build­ing to its for­mer glo­ry. 

Among the open­ing exhi­bi­tions at the brand spank­ing new City Gallery is Regan Gen­try’s instal­la­tion Make Way. Along with much of Gen­try’s work, it pro­vokes ques­tions about the con­tem­po­rary city, and in this spir­it the Gallery is host­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion on “Human­is­ing the City”. It’s on Wednes­day 4 Novem­ber at 12.30pm (which is one of the Gallery’s pop­u­lar free Wednes­days) in the Adam Audi­to­ri­um.

I will chair the dis­cus­sion, which will be around ques­tions such as “How do plan­ning and urban design in Welling­ton respond to human needs? What is the role of urban design in mak­ing our cities live­able, live­ly, and com­mu­ni­ty-focused places? How do we cre­ate pub­lic space which bal­ances envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty with infra­struc­ture sen­si­tive to the needs of its inhab­i­tants?” The oth­er par­tic­i­pants are Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Pen­ny Allan (Pro­gramme Direc­tor, Land­scape Archi­tec­ture, Fac­ul­ty of Archi­tec­ture & Design, Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­si­ty of Welling­ton), Pro­fes­sor Philip­pa How­den-Chap­man (Direc­tor, NZ Cen­tre for Sus­tain­able Cities), Philip Belesky (Welling­ton free­lance design­er, Eye of the Fish blog­ger), and Mike Mel­lor (Vice Pres­i­dent, Liv­ing Streets Aotearoa).

As Robyn has right­ly point­ed out, tonight is Pecha Kucha at Down­stage at 7.30 (get there ear­ly if you are going).

Tonight is also the open­ing of Roger Mor­ris’s new show “See Noth­ing”.  Once again things are get­ting polit­i­cal, this time with a show based around “WHAT IF”? 9/11/2001.  Roger uses oil, print, graphite, monop­oly boards, jig­saw pieces and repur­posed gener­ic land­scapes to explore the theme.

Every­thing kicks off at 5.30 at This­tle Hall on Cuba Street.  Take a look at some of the works on the Face­book invite, if you are lucky you may be able to fit in Pecha Kucha after­wards.

It’s time for anoth­er Pecha Kucha Night, where cre­ative peo­ple of Welling­ton will each give a short talk — with 20 slides each at 20 sec­onds per slide.

It’s TONIGHT — Mon­day 19 Octo­ber, at the love­ly Down­stage The­atre. Doors open at 6.30pm, with the event start­ing at 7.30. It’s $9 admis­sion — cash only.

Tonight’s line-up:

Ralph Johns — land­scape archi­tect
Meena Kadri — design lecturer/communications strategist/researcher
Philippe Cam­pays — architect/artist
Sarah Max­ey — graph­ic designer/artist
Andy Irv­ing — artist/designer
Hilary Beat­on — Down­stage The­atre
Troy Dono­van — facade design­er
James M. Mad­dock
Mar­garet Austin
Craig Nichol­son — inter­cul­tur­al­ist
She­ba Williams — artist
George Hajian — graph­ic design­er
Meighan Ellis — artist
James Everett — game design­er
Ali­son Wong — novelist/poet

Tomor­row eve, come to the Film Archive and wit­ness the unveil­ing of The Blue Room, a group show includ­ing (lucky num­ber) 13 artists who were asked to respond ‘in a psy­chic way’ to an idea, site or place. Some of the results are quite star­tling.

Curat­ed by Pip­pa Sander­son the show fea­tures Welling­to­ni­ans Bek Pilch­er, Johan­na Sanders and Pip­pa Sander­son, with Elle Loui August, Bekah Car­ran, Louise Clifton, Andrea du Chate­nier, Vio­let Faigan, Lon­nie Hutchin­son, Sask­ia Leek, Louise Men­zies, Dane Mitchell and Stu­art Shep­herd.

Some are believ­ers, some skep­tics, but all raise ques­tions about the fas­ci­na­tion with the psy­chic that haunts us now — the tele­vi­sion pro­grammes, the inter­net sites devot­ed to spells and spec­tres, the tour­ing psy­chics…

All wel­come at the open­ing, 5:30pm tomor­row, plus there’s an Artist Talk at the Archive 12:15pm, Tues­day 27 Octo­ber.

The exhi­bi­tion runs until Sat­ur­day 21 Novem­ber 2009. 

This Sun­day’s Sound­stage @ Down­stage is a goody — Rhi­an Shee­han plays his album Stand­ing in Silence from start to fin­ish with accom­pa­ny­ing filmic ele­ments by Gareth Moon (Nek­tar).

Guar­an­teed to be like noth­ing you have seen at Down­stage before, Rhi­an’s sound as described by him is “like float­ing through space in a warm bath”.

Described by review­ers as “spine tingling…a tsuna­mi of sound” (Tom Cardy, Domin­ion Post), Stand­ing in Silence at Down­stage fea­tures a full com­ple­ment of live musi­cians play­ing along­side Rhi­an includ­ing key col­lab­o­ra­tor Jeff Boyle, two per­cus­sion­ists, a string sec­tion, Raashi Shee­han (Rhom­bus), Jerami­ah Ross (aka Mod­ule) and Wool­shed Ses­sions mem­bers Jess Cham­bers, Andy Hum­mel and Peter Hill.

For those who like to join in, cus­tom made music box­es will be onsale before the show, which you can play in par­tic­u­lar tracks.

The lus­cious Rhi­an Shee­han: Stand­ing in Silence this Sun­day 18 Oct @ Down­stage The­atre.  It starts prompt­ly at the sen­si­ble hour of 7pm.

For more info check out Simon Sweet­man’s blog , and you can pur­chase tick­ets at Down­stage.

LATE UPDATE: Only 16 tick­ets left!

A lot of peo­ple don’t know that Welling­ton has quite a siz­able Brazil­ian expa­tri­ate com­mu­ni­ty. A bunch of them and their Kiwi friends have been work­ing hard to put togeth­er the Live Brazil 2009 Fes­ti­val this week­end.

The fes­ti­val will com­prise music, dance, capoeira, and cook­ing and drink work­shops. It starts on Fri­day night with a per­fo­mance fea­tur­ing Tam­bolelê (from Minas Gerais) at the Memo­r­i­al The­atre on the Vic cam­pus, with most oth­er events tak­ing place at the South­ern Cross.

Full details at this chaot­ic but infor­ma­tion-rich site or in sum­ma­ry form here.

This par­tic­u­lar Welling­ton­ista will be lurk­ing in Car­men Miran­da’s band on Sat­ur­day night — come and demon­strate your fruit-laden cos­tume and we can have a caipir­in­ha.

Spot­ted near the Mt Vic look­out.

I dun­no about the Greater Welling­ton guys, but I reck­on the Welling­ton­ista could have put all this infor­ma­tion on one sign — the only dif­fer­nce between the two is the name of the poi­son, and the colour of the pel­let.  

Our “cov­er­age” of events here at Welling­ton­ista can be a bit scat­ter­gun at times. Like the tagline says, “ran­dom stuff about New Zealand’s cap­i­tal city since 2005”.

The gen­er­al premise is that we write about stuff we like, from what­ev­er angle we like.  How­ev­er if it isn’t fea­tured, it don’t mean we don’t rate it, just means that we have been busy or some such.

Any-the-ho, last week­end was the Maori Art Mar­ket at Te Rau­para­ha Are­na and Pata­ka Gallery in Porirua.  It would have been great to see ta moko artist Mark Kop­ua at work but you snooze, you lose in this town. 

Last Wednes­day also would have been a great chance to attend a talk on Mana When­ua Maori His­to­ry in Welling­ton, giv­en by Mor­rie Love in the reopened City Gallery Welling­ton.  It was free, damnit! 

Nev­er mind. It is good that Welling­ton offers so much to the curi­ous and the brave; those who want to actu­al­ly par­tic­i­pate in the cul­tur­al life of this city.  We will con­tin­ue to fos­sick for cul­tur­al gems in the twit­ter­stream and oth­er places to alert you to what is going on out there but please for­give us if we miss some of the good stuff.

After the jump some stuff you should­n’t miss this week (includ­ing tonight!):