Review: Vanilla Miraka

Per­former Hay­ley Sproull tells her story of a “white wahine’s deeply dis­en­gaged bicul­tur­al her­it­age”. Recog­nising that her Nana’s death meant a loss of con­nec­tion to her Māori her­it­age this is a “comed­ic explor­a­tion of her embar­rassed ignor­ance.” (Quotes from the pro­gramme.) An eleg­ant set in white peg­board – on one side a whare shape, on […]

Review: The grass is meaner

Alec and Mary McPh­er­son run a little cafe in scen­ic New Zea­l­and called House of Mince. Mary is a little tired of the mono­tony of their life but she’s happy enough. Then a man known as Don­key Boy vis­its Lon­­don-based crime lord Vic Snow, and Alec and Mary’s lives won’t be the same. Writ­ten by […]

A room with a (typically Wellington) view.

A night at the Bolton Hotel

Back in August, our edit­or Jo atten­ded the Bolton Hotel’s Wel­ling­ton on a Plate event and enjoyed it migh­tily. In the ensu­ing inter­play on Twit­ter, the Hotel invited one of us to stay the night so that we could exper­i­ence their hos­pit­al­ity more fully. I quickly took up the offer on the behalf of the […]

We hear from some of the 2016 candidates in the local body election

So, we asked some ques­tions. And we hoped that can­did­ates would get in touch with us. In pre­vi­ous years, we’d obtained a spread­sheet of every single can­did­ate and emailed them, and frankly, work­ing as a group, it was a bloody lot of work get­ting their answers back, try­ing to hunt them down, try­ing to make […]

Candidates 2016: Justin Lester for Mayor

1. What should the council’s role be in cre­at­ing afford­able hous­ing? WCC is the coun­try’s second largest land­lord. We’ve got dec­ades of exper­i­ence in provid­ing afford­able hous­ing. I firmly believe there’s a role for WCC to… 2. What one pro­ject for Wel­ling­ton have you been most act­ive on so far? Over the past 6 years […]

Candidates 2016: Diane Calvert for Onslow-Western Ward

1. What should the council’s role be in cre­at­ing afford­able hous­ing? Stream­line con­sent­ing pro­cess. Open up new land with avail­able pub­lic trans­port links. Sup­port public/private part­ner­ships for new devel­op­ment. Sup­port social hous­ing 2. What one pro­ject for Wel­ling­ton have you been most act­ive on so far? I brought my loc­al com­munity togeth­er in 2015 so […]

Candidates 2016: Troy Mihaka for Lambton Ward

We asked the ques­tions, they answered. 1. What should the council’s role be in cre­at­ing afford­able hous­ing? Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil needs to work with developers to cre­ate more through a com­bin­a­tion of intens­i­fic­a­tion in our inner-city and open­ing land for devel­op­ment. 2. What one pro­ject for Wel­ling­ton have you been most act­ive on so far? […]

Candidates, we want to hear from you – Election 2016

Hey, did y’all know there’s an elec­tion com­ing up? Yes, there is! And once again, we want to provide you with some decent cov­er­age of the issues we care about. Loc­al body polit­ics is IMPORTANT. Once again, we’re ask­ing can­did­ates to con­tact us with the answers to the ques­tions below. We’re doing things a little […]

À la carless – The progressive dinner by e‑bike

Wel­ling­ton on a Plate is near­ing it’s end for 2016 but there’s still a good week­end’s worth of time to get out and about and try the things you’ve been mean­ing to, but haven’t got around to yet. I was lucky enough to be able to do that on an elec­tric bicycle and it’s one […]

Two shows on now in Wellington

First up, a bril­liant inter­pret­a­tion of a Shakespeare’s Richard II. Richard II is a few years into his king­ship and is start­ing to flex his power. After some dubi­ous decisions regard­ing his empire he takes the chance to seize land after the death of John of Gaunt  thus set­ting Gaunt’s child, Bol­ing­broke, against him. Richard […]