Dancing in the streets
Amnesty International are looking to recruit street performers to support human rights as part of Freedom Week 2006(their annual awareness and fundraising week 31 july – 6 august)
Money collected on the streets this year will support their crisis campaigning work, in particular their work to stop human rights abuses in Darfur, Sudan.
To help raise the profile of Freedom Week, and boost public donations, for the first time this year, they’re asking artists, buskers and performing arts students to give up half an hour or an hour of their time to busk on Freedom Day, their street appeal day. In Wellington that’s Thursday 3rd August.
This is an invite to dance for love in the street to support Amnesty International’s Freedom Day.
What: Freedom Day street performance with Wellington Batucada (for Amnesty International’s Freedom Week)
When: Thursday 3rd August, between 5 and 6pm
Where: Corner of Lambton Quay and Featherston St (in front of Old Bank Arcade)
Costumes: To be advised
Other: There will be no practices, so you will need to be confident in following carnival/samba reggae moves as lead by a teacher and freestyling as well.
Shake it for a good cause, or just go along and show your support.
Tom’s Martini on National Radio
For those who missed Tom discussing his Wellington Martini mission on Kim Hill’s Saturday morning National Radio, here’s a streaming mp3 link of the show. (Just click on it – it should fire up your default mp3 player and play the file. Don’t know how long the link will stay active, though.)
If windows media format is more your thing (and, if it is, may we recommend you review your digital media usage options), then head over the National Radio site and try changing the settings there.
Williams Gallery
There is a great exhibition at the Williams Gallery in Petone featuring a range of prints by Michael Smither. Most of the art uses fairly abstract forms in a limited palette. I rate them highly. Don’t be put off by the boat picture on the Williams website, because frankly I think there are far stronger pieces than that.
Very appealing too are the prices. Plenty to be had for under $1000, and if you’re in the market to spend more, you can get a lovely big print.
And for the more sensitive amongst you, I didn’t notice any paintings by Patrick Williams starring lady bits. Praise be.
And we will party on, thanks to you
The front page story on the Dominion Post is Party on, says dying Il Casino Boss, and all media grumbles about the horrible exploitative nature of that stupid newspaper aside, the Wellingtonista is really upset to hear that Remiro Bresolin has terminal cancer. Readers will surely know how dear to our hearts Il Casino, Scopa and Boulot are, so our thoughts and well wishes are with the family.
Bender
The next installment in the “bleep” series takes a kind of DIY mad-scientist approach to making music. Bleep #2 is all about “circuit bending“: the art of torturing, transplanting, and grafting electronic sound-making devices so that they make more interesting sounds. Start with some mass-produced techno-toy from the Warehouse, the sort of thing that make irritating electronic noises, and attack it with screwdrivers and soldering irons to coax more interesting (and yes, probably more irritating) noises from its innards. The street finds its own uses for technology, indeed!
It is a two-part event, consisting of an interactive worshop this Sunday afternoon, followed by a gig at Happy next Wednesday. Full details are on the bleep website.
Now you see it….
Remember a few months back that the city council was worried that someone might steal the 2.5 tonne Henry Moore statue that sits at the edge of the Botanic Gardens near Salamanca Road?
I mean, since they planted the idea the Wellingtonista crew did band together & steal it for our foyer one night. But in the morning we regretted it & snuck it back before anyone noticed.
Anyway, I’m not sure what is happening here… either the council has decided to disguise the statue from prospective thieves…. Or it represents a new work of art in itself. Perhaps by Christo?
Future waterfront
I’ve been asked to give a brief talk to the board and management of Wellington Waterfront Ltd (WWL) about my “three top priority ideas for the waterfront”. It will be no suprise to most of you that I won’t struggle for things to say, but while I’ve been asked to speak as an individual rather than as a representative for any group, I’d like to get your input into this.
‘Pocket-city at the Edge of the World’
The Sydney Morning Herald features a rather rave write-up on Wellington on their website today:
After years of relative obscurity, the city is blossoming. It has reinvented itself as an elegant, modern place without the arrogance that often accompanies such development.
Okay, maybe we could have done without the ‘years of relative obscurity’ part.
Future City
In a recent post, I mentioned that I had seen projections of an extra 3,000 inner-city residents within the next few years, but that I couldn’t find a reference to the study. As it turns out, the campaigners against the controversial Harbour Quays development have come to my rescue: their report on the potential economic impacts (530kB PDF) includes a table of actual and forecast CBD household numbers from 1991 to 2021 (page 14). They list the sources as Statistics NZ, Bayleys and Property Economics (the authors of the report), but I couldn’t find out whether the future figures were based upon economic and demographic modelling or simple extrapolation.
But let’s take the numbers as read, and use them to estimate the increase in inner-city population by taking a nominal average household size of 3. This is a bit smaller than the current average for the CBD, but household sizes are generally falling, so it seems a reasonable guesstimate. This gives an extra 3,300 people by 2011, and 11,000 extra by 2021: a 75% increase over the current CBD population!
Whares? No worries.
When they were first proposed, the Wharenui and Wharewaka at Taranaki St Wharf were among the least controversial developments on the waterfront. Even Waterfront Watch seemed to cautiously approve, given that these were low-rise cultural facilities rather than medium-rise buildings with commercial components, though some of their members managed to find views that would be blocked. However, that quickly changed once the rowing clubs realised that they might have to lose some parking space, and the dispute has only just been resolved.