Website 1: ‘ISSUES.co.nz’ – talking up ideas and issues
What’s on the hearts and minds of everyday New Zealanders? What gets their goat? Find out on New Zealand’s first purpose-built website for issues campaigns. A great website to watch if you need a speech topic, or if you’re politically inclined.
Website 2: The World Digital Library
Launching April 21, this The World Digital Library is going to be awesome! The project has major international backing and will bring – free of charge – significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. Make sure you check out the promo video.
They’re back! After a five year hiatus The Edge Summer Jam is returning to Wellington, March 4 at the TSB Arena. This year’s lineup includes P-Money, Metro Station and Midnight Youth, with The Veronicas as the headlining artists. Tickets are available now through Ticketek. Check out the promotional video below.
P.S. The Edge Summer Jam is pretty pricey, so if you don’t have the dosh you can go the cheaper option and reserve some CDs through our fantastic catalogue 
Youth Week 2009 – a little way off but worth checking out the official site, particularly if you’re keen to run an event.
The theme this year: relationships.
During the 19th century, a group of French artists decided to rebel. Instead of faithfully re-creating their subject matter (portrait, landscape, still life) these impressionist painters focused on the overall effects of colour and movement, using unmixed colour and broken strokes. Their fascination with capturing the momentary and transient effects of sunlight lead them to break with the rigid, studio-based painting traditions and do their paintings en plein air (outdoors, “in the open air”).
Claude Monet was a founder of the French Impressionist painting movement and its most prolific practitioner. In fact, the movement derives its name from Monet’s painting, Impression, Sunrise.
Monet is a pretty big cheese in the art world so it’s truly amazing to be able to get up close and personal with his art without visiting an overseas gallery or art museum. Don’t miss out! Visit Monet and the Impressionists at Te Papa. Exhibition ends 17 May.
This Saturday, 14 Februrary, is important for two reasons: romance and pro skating! Yeah, we all know it’s Valentines Day - the chocolates, the roses, the cards and sickly sweet P.D.A. (Public Displays of Affection) – but did you know that this Saturday a whole bunch of professional skaters will be competing at Waitangi Skatepark for the biggest prize purse in NZ skating history? So make a date, take a date, to see the thrills’n spills of Bowl-o-Rama 2009.
(9am – 6pm, Waitangi Skatepark, Waitangi Park. Postponement date: 15 February )
Happy Chinese New Year - Gung Hay Fat Choy! (which means “may prosperity be with you” in Cantonese. You knew that, of course!).
Welcome to the year of the Ox, Ji Chou. Yes, I know l’m lagging behind a bit. But unlike our New Year – which is celebrated over 2 or 3 days - the Chinese celebrate Chinese New Year (or Spring festival) over a 15 day period. China’s calendar is lunisolar, which means that Chinese New Year can fall from anywhere between 20 of January and 21 February. This year, Chinese New Year ends Tuesday 10 February. So I’m not that late, really.
Sample the tastes, sounds and sights of the Pacific this Saturday at Nui FM’s Positively Pasifika festival. Food, stuff to buy, and entertainment – it’s all go 9.30am-5.00pm, Waitangi Park.
We all know that January 1 is New Years Day, but did you know that Jan 1 is also Global Family Day – “One Day of Peace and Sharing for all faiths, cultures, races, nationalities and economic classes”?
Global Family Day (GFD) was first celebrated, with the dawn of the new millenium, between Israeli and Palestinian families in the refugee camp of Nablus. Later, when it was noticed that the century had begun remarkably calmly despite widespread apprehension (fears of terrorism, the “Millenium Bug” and the like), the United States Congress unanimously voted to establish January 1 as a special time of peace and sharing. In 2001 the United Nations General Assembly passed UnRes. 56/2 recognising GFD and encouraged all its Member states to observe the holiday. It’ll be interesting to see, with tensions running high in the Middle East, what impact GFD will have this year.
So Happy New Year and Happy Global Family Day! Peace out.
Yup, we’ve been warned this summer’s going to be a hot one. And with the global economy making spending that little bit tighter, we all need to save our recessionary dollars for cooling ice cream and gelato. There are a couple of things one can do to keep it easy on the pocket while having a good time. There are, of course, loads of free or low cost stuff to get from the library – not to mention the fact that libraries have excellent air conditioning! But there is also Wellington’s famous Summer City festival, packed with free events. It kicks off on New Year’s eve with a massive party in Civic Square, and ends 29 March with (coincidentally) more kicking off in a ”mini world-cup” football match known as Culture Kicks. Libraries will soon have printed copies of the programme, but why wait? Check out the Summer City offerings online at wotzon.com.
It’s a matter of hours before the Opening Ceremony of this year’s Beijing Olympics. The modern Olympics have been captured on film for almost a century! The official Olympic website’s history archive has a clip from every Olympic Opening Ceremony since the 1912 Opening Ceremony in Stockholm.
From midday each day over the next two weeks, TV One will be offering extensive coverage of the Olympics. Those of you with easy access to hi-speed connections and plenty of bandwidth may want to watch online via TVNZ’s website; they will have four channels streaming live.
Whakarongo mai. Listen up! It’s Māori language week. This year the theme is “Te Reo i te Kāinga – Māori Language in the Home.” So here are a couple of useful words to add to your huinga kupu (vocabulary).
hōhā - (1) be boring, bored, wearisome, tired or fed up with (2) nuisance. “My little brother is hōhā “. I also have it on good authority that it can be used with angsty parents, as in, ” Mum, don’t be so hōhā!”
turituri – shut up. Not to be said to your elders!
So there you have it. Two new kupu to try on your whānau.
Te Wiki o te Reo Māori 2008 – karawhiua mai! (Māori language week 2008 – bring it on!)
Ahoy there! Moored at Queen’s Wharf is a piece of maritime history. Built in 1914, two years after the Titanic, it’s MVDoulos - officially the world’s oldest ocean-going passenger ship. Nicknamed “the floating United Nations”, Doulos is home to 350 crew and volunteers from fifty different countries.
The ship is owned by a charitable Christian company called “Good Books For All” (which is what the letters GBA on the ship’s funnel stands for). At every port the Dolous visits they hold a book fair where they try to sell books and CDs for the cheapest price possible. The current sale has over 6,000 titles. Crew members from the different countries also offer amazing tours of the ship.
Doulos will be in port until July 23 as part of a farewell tour. Sadly, new maritime regulations mean that, after almost 100 years, the Doulos has to be taken out of action in 2010 
So don’t miss out on the tours and various programmes offered by the ‘Doulosians’ these holidays.
“Satisfy Your Cravings” – a team of students from Rongotai College, St Mary’s College, Wellington Girls’ College, and Te Kura Kaupapa o Nga Mokopuna – presents a day of free entertainment for youth, by youth (’for rangitahi, by rangitahi). There’s a great line-up including comedy duo The Laughing Samoans, the Musical Island Boys, and DJs from the Whiteria DJ School.
Head down to Te Papa this Sunday. Events will be held throughout the museum. For more info, check out Te Papa’s web page or become Horizon 08’s Bebo buddy .
I must admit that I have a bit of a thing against stock photography, particularly in shopping centres: perfect-looking models with perfect white-toothed smiles, holding iPods, showing off shoes, posing in jeans, eating exotic looking foods, flirting with other exceptionally good-looking people; these images just don’t seem representative of the people who are doing the actual consuming! It feels fake. But love it or loathe it, stock photography plays an important role in everyday image exchange. Stock photography is found pretty much everywhere in the media: on book covers, advertising posters, websites and magazines…
Now just imagine if a photo shoot turned you into one of the most used stock-photo faces in the world. This happened to Jennifer Anderson. She’s no celebrity musician or movie star, but her stock-shot face features in numerous advertisments, on countless book covers and various websites. Anderson has gained a cult internet following and has her own blog and online store at www.theeverywheregirl.com .
What are some of the stock photos or images that seem to be everywhere? Let’s “take stock” of them (groan, bad pun alert!). Comment back with the web addresses, advertisments, or book covers that feature the image, or a variation thereof. You’ll need to have seen the image in two or more places for it to qualify.
Get yourself down to Te Papa and tohora for free! No, tohora is not really a verb but the Maori word for whale. Wellington City Council is paying for residents of Wellington to see ‘Whale: Tohora’, an exciting cetacean exhibition at Te Papa. This one day offer is only available May 8, 10.00am – 9.00pm. You will need to prove that you live in Wellington, so dive into your wallets and make sure you have your library card handy (Of course you do! You use it all the time to access our amazing services) before heading out.
Don’t forget to turn your clocks back by an hour this Sunday, and treat yourself to an extra hour’s lie-in!
Want to be a film star? Maybe act, dance or sing professionally? The National Youth Drama School (NYDS) 2008 offers you the opportunity to acquire or hone your skills over an 8-day residential drama school at Havelock North High, Hawkes Bay. From Aril 19 through to April 27, the NYDS will hold intensive workshops covering all aspects of performing arts. Check out www.nyds.co.nz for further details.
(* inspired by Shakespeare ’s As You Like It)
I’d like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I’d like to hold it in my arms
And keep it company
I’d like to see the world for once
All standing hand in hand
And hear them echo through the hills
For peace throughout the land
That’s the song I hear
Let the world sing today
A song of peace that echoes on
And never goes away
- (Roger Cook, Roger Greenway, Bill Backer & Billy Davis)
On March 21, 1960, between 5000 and 7000 demonstrators gathered outside the Sharpeville police station (in South Africa) to protest apartheid “pass laws”. These laws required black South Africans to carry passes, restricting their movement and increasing segregation.
Saturday February 16 is going to be a double-whammy day with two amazing, free events. After checking out the Absolutely Positively Pasefika Festival, why not rock on down to Waitangi Park? There the best local and international skating talent will compete for US $10,000 in the World Cup sanctioned Bowl-A-Rama. This is your opportunity to see star skaters including Rune Gilfberg, Omar Hassen and Lance Mountain. Check out Scoop for further details.
Kiwi comics is your portal to the New Zealand comic scene. This wiki-style site allows you to keep in contact with creators and comic dealers around the country, find out about comic cons and other events, plus much, much more!
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