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Reading, Wellington, and whatever else – teenblog@wcl.govt.nz

Tag: Happenings Page 2 of 3

Winging Your Way Through The Weekend, 27-28/4

Kia ora!

Welcome to the weekend. What to do, what to do?

If you find yourself wandering about Newtown this weekend why not check out Wellington Festival Of Circus? If having clowning & cabaret up in your face isn’t doing it for you maybe Darren Shan could keep you in theme but through the safety of bound text?

If you’re more of a performer then a watcher have you considered entering this years Smokefree Rockquest? It’s the 25th year this right-of-passage is running and man has it fostered all sorts of household name kiwi musicians. Need some inspiration? Here’s a surface scratching list of previous contestants including Kimbra and last years winners New Vinyl. Take yourself on a journey through our CD collection.

The curtain falls on Game Masters at Te Papa this weekend. The amazing exhibition that caters to almost every level of gamer was borrowed from the incredible ACMI in Melbourne’s Federation Square and includes Pacman, Space Invaders and Sonic!

New music on the playlist shelf this week includes ex-Wellingtonian Willy Moon and half New Zealand alt-indie darlings The Veils with their fourth album.

Ever wondered what happens when you wring a soggy towel out in space? Here’s the answer:

– Physics, fascinating!

That’s what’s a going down.

Fowler out.

Mix & Mash 2013

The Great New Zealand Remix and Mashup Competition

“Organised by Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand, DigitalNZ and the National Library of New Zealand and enabled by Mix & Mash Sponsors and Partners, Mix & Mash 2013 will promote and celebrate the creative reuse of New Zealand’s common cultural heritage.

“Mix & Mash wants all New Zealanders, young and old, to tell new stories by adapting and remixing Public Domain and Creative Commons licensed content.” (more here)

Mixed and mashed entries on the theme “Stories about the Past” will be showcased in May, and there will be prizes! If you feel virtually crafty and you’re interested, visit the Mix & Mash website for dates, rules, definitions, ideas and sources of (legal-to-use) images, music, video and other data. (Note: work produced for school assessments is accepted!)

Christopher Paolini in Wellington in June

The writer of the enormously popular Inheritance books is going to be in town on Thursday June the 28th!

Tickets for the event will cost $5.00 (bargain!) and will be sold through the Children’s Bookshop in Kilbirnie, but you can register your interest now if you’re keen: just email them – you can find their contact details and more information on their website right here.

Also, if you haven’t yet read Inheritance (the final book in the series) and you’ve been waiting for the reserve queue at the library to calm down, now’s your chance!

Mr Paolini is also tweeting about his book touring adventures, and other interesting stuff.

Zombies Vs. Gleeks

 Brains

You, your mates and zombies, Glee, prizes, gloating rights, free food, brains! Wait, what…?

Okay, there might not be brains, but eveything else will be there. Pull a team of Glee and Zombie experts together and get ready for the Zombies Vs. Gleeks Trivia Night.

Open for teams of  13 to 18 year olds (min 2 – max 4), the Zombies Vs. Gleeks Teen Trivia Night will be at the Wellington Central Library on 27th May at 6.30pm. Registrations open soon and places will be limited so get your team ready to go and start planning your costumes.

Cassandra Clare in Kilbirnie

Cassandra Clare, author of the bestselling Mortal Instruments series, will be visiting New Zealand next week, including a whirlwind stop for a booksigning at the Children’s Bookshop in Kilbirnie on Tuesday the 10th of May. If you’re interested in attending, email the Children’s Bookshop: more information, including times and email address, is here.

On the subject, Booksellers NZ is giving you the chance to win a copy of City of Fallen Angels. You just need to enter before 5pm on Wednesday the 4th (you’ve got two days!).

See Some European Masters for Free

On Thursday the 3rd of February you can see the European Masters exhibition at Te Papa for free: all you need to do is confirm you’re a Wellington resident (your Wellington City Libraries library card will do for this), oh and also be prepared for a queue (especially if you’re going after school)!

See paintings by Picasso, Munch, Renoir and many more: for more information on the exhibition visit the Te Papa site here.

Teen only night! At! Karori!

teenonlynight

Scratch Day

“Scratch” is a young people’s animation and programming tool developed by MIT’s Media Lab in the USA. It has a half-million followers worldwide, mostly teens. Sort of like facebook, but more animation-y (therefore better?), it has a strong community of users who collaborate on designs and hang out at things like “Scratch Day” .

Incidentally, and the reason for this post, there is a Wellington “Scratch Day” happening on Saturday 22nd May in the CBD. There is a facebook event page you can RSVP to here. If you are a seasoned veteran of the scratching, or even just a curious n00b, go along and join in on the animation fun.

Get your pink on

Logo smallPink Shirt Day is on April 28th. What is Pink Shirt Day? Here’s what the website had to say… 

Pink Shirt Day aims to show that bullying is not ok and won’t be tolerated. By encouraging the people of New Zealand to wear a Pink Shirt on the 28th of April we can help to raise awareness of bullying and show there is a  massive amount of people who support taking a stance against bullying.

Sounds good to me! Get your pink on and show everyone that bullying is so not cool!

Free Cooking Classes

Evolve and Motoko Aotearoa present FREE cooking classes for young people!

Jacinta Saeki is an experienced chef. For 7 weeks she will be teaching young people to cook cheap, healthy and delicious food at Te Ruru Hou (Evolve). Limited to 12 participants – this is a hands-on class where young people 14-24 years make the food and then eat it – YUM!!

Starts Monday 12 April 4.00-6.30pm

To register please email simon@evolveyouth.org.nz or phone 801 9150

Wellington’s Cherry Blossom Festival

The Cherry Blossom Festival is on this Sunday, the 20th of September at the St James Theatre and Te Papa.

The Sakai Association (Sakai is Wellington’s Japanese Sister City) will be hosting a range of fun activities including: traditional kyudo (Japanese archery) demonstrations, shakuhachi (bamboo flute) and shamisen (three-stringed musical instrument) music, beautiful ikebana (flower arranging) and the peaceful tea ceremony.

Handle the kyudo bows/arrows and the Japanese musical instruments, create ikebana, make tea, play with traditional Japanese toys and learn origami.

Read more about it at this link, or download the .pdf brochure.

Next Week

Is a busy one. Things to note:

Tuesday 11 August – Urban Survival Series “Staying Sane” 7-8pm at the Central Library. This week’s session (“Work & Wage”) ended with a couple of job interviews for a couple of people, so we’re wondering what will come out of this next session? Email us your questions on life, relationships with parentals and friends and stuff to teenblog@wcl.govt.nz.

Wednesday 12 August is Hoodie Day – you can find out more about this here and here. More trivia: Wikipedia says that hoodies are referred to as “bunnyhugs” in Saskatchewan (Canada).

Most importantly, Thursday 13 August is International Lefthanders Day, so be nice to us (be nice to us anyway). Because we like lists, here’s a list of famous lefthanded people. The library’s also got a collection of books about being left-handed.

That’s approximately everything at the moment.

Astrophotography

If you’ve ever seen the sky at night – the moon rising over Lake Taupo, say, or maybe you can see what might be Venus –  and thought to yourself, “that looks awesome, I should take a photo of it”, and you do, but the photo just looks like toothpaste on your best black top and you can’t understand why, then hurry to the Central Library tonight. Hurry!

Would you like to take photographs of the night sky? Not sure what to use or where to begin? John Field from the Wellington Astronomical Society will explore and explain how to use your Digital SLR camera and software to produce images that were previously beyond the scope of amateur photographers. Topics include what you need, how DSLR cameras work, what settings to use, how to polar align your mount using a DSLR, taking unguided images using a tripod, piggy-back and prime focus imaging through using a telescope, and image processing using freely available software. John will also include both the good, the bad and the ugly images he has taken to show what can go wrong and what you get when it all goes right

That’s happening tonight (May the 13th) at 7pm on the second level of the Central Library.

Take your valentine to the skatepark

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 )

We can haz teh facebooks?

The Wellington City Library Teen Page has gone all 2.0 with its new facebook profile. You can use it to keep up to date with all our happenings – things like upcoming events, new books and CDs will be posted. Become a fan of us (we know you are already …) and receive invitations and alerts first!

Zinefest ’08

The library has a massive collection of local and international zines*. Check out the library’s zine page for more information. The annual Zinefest is tomorrow; here are the details!

Independently and inexpensively produced magazines, usually with a fairly limited circulation.

The 2nd annual Wellington Zinefest is returning this Saturday November the 15th. The Wellington City Libraries’ Zine Collection will be there, along with your favourite zine librarians, so even if you have empty pockets, you can still come along and browse our diverse range of zines. There will also be heaps of other ziney stalls, workshops and talks to get you into the DIY spirit. Oh and food, there will be tasty treats too!

Be there!

Wellington Zinefest 2008
Wesley Church Hall (map)
11am – 3pm, 15th November
More info on the Zinefest MySpace page.

And if you’re keen on zines, look for this book in the library: Whatcha Mean, What’s a Zine? : The Art of Making Zines and Mini Comics, by Mark Todd. A great place to start, especially if you can’t make it to the Zinefest.

FIFA Under 17 Women’s World Cup

Heads up: two of the quarter finals of the Under 17 Women’s World Cup are at Westpac Stadium this Saturday (being tomorrow, the 8th of November) at 1pm and 4pm. For just $7 (if you’re under 17 – it’s a whole $10 if you’re not) you get to watch the might of Denmark take on the best the Korea Republic has to offer, closely followed by football powerhouse Germany up against Canada (who beat New Zealand in pool play). Sounds like a good time. Visit the stadium website for time and ticket info. For all the news, views and statistics go to FIFA.com.

“You’ll be amazed at what you can learn in an evening”

says Victoria University…

VU are referring to their Information Evening being held on the 8th of May. Prospective students, this is your chance to find out about the university’s full range of courses, degrees and student services.

VU’s Information Evening is on Thursday 8 May 2008 from 6pm at the Maclaurin Foyer (Kelburn Campus, Gate 5, Kelburn Parade, Wellington).

RSVP to 0800 VIC UNI or email course-advice@vuw.ac.nz.  Visit their site to find out more.

Have yourself a whale of a time, all expenses paid…

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.

Konichiwa!

If you are (or you know someone who is) aged 15 – 17 (as at August this year), interested in science and/or the environment and are up for a free three-week trip to Japan in August read on.

The Japanese government is offering a chance to travel all expenses paid to Okinawa, Japan and study the natural environment of the place with 75 other young people from around the Asia-Pacific region. They’re looking for applications from anyone interested – Arigatou gozaimasu!

Visit here for the ‘further information’ document. Contact Tessa at the Global Education Centre for further info: 04 496 9510.

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