Podcast – Resources in the city with FESTA

Christchurch City Libraries blog hosts a series of regular podcasts from New Zealand’s only specialist human rights radio show Speak up – Kōrerotia. This show is created by Sally Carlton.

This episode discusses issues around the use of resources in the Christchurch urban environment including –

• resourcefulness
• reuse / recycling / upcycling
• people power
• architecture and people
• using waste materials in architecture

The panel for this show includes host Sally Carlton, Jessica Halliday, Founder of FESTA, Juliet Arnott of Rekindle, and Jos de Krieger of Superuse Studios in Rotterdam.

Transcript of the audio file

Websites mentioned in the show

• Te Pūtahi – Christchurch centre for architecture and city-making
• FESTA – Festival of Transitional Architecture
• Harvestmap – Marketplace for professional upcyclers
• Rekindle

Find out more in our collection

• Find titles about Sustainable architecture
• Find titles about Reuse
• Find titles about Recycling in Christchurch
• Find titles about Recycled products
• Watch streaming video about sustainable architecture (access with your library card & password / PIN)
• Find articles about recovered building materials (access with your library card & password / PIN)
• Find articles about sustainable architecture and materials (access with your library card & password / PIN)

      

More about Speak up – Kōrerotia

• Speak up – Kōrerotia on Facebook
• Contact the host of the show via speakupkorerotia@gmail.com.

The show is also available on the following platforms:

• Plains FM website
• SoundCloud
• iTunes

I draw the line

In any interaction where I mention that I try to draw every day, there is a point straight after the words leave my lips when I can hear the drawbridge being cranked up, and see the intervening moat filling up with tablets, apps, Pokemon and the sundry small, useless products of 3D printing. And, as if from a distant galaxy, I hear the person on the other side of the moat say some variation of the following: “Oh I can’t draw a thing. I can’t even draw a stick man.”

And let’s say, just for the moment, that you are stick-man challenged, still I bet you had the chance to draw and paint and play music when you were at school. What is a great concern for many educators nowadays is that the swing to a predominantly technology-based education system like STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) means that many children will be deprived of the opportunity to develop their own direct, tactile creativity, and will be doomed to a life of thinking that creativity is the manipulation of someone else’s genius.

Which is why I am such a huge fan of The Big Draw – The world’s largest drawing festival. Most education systems nowadays focus on STEM curricula. The Big Draw is part of an initiative to change STEM to STEAM through the addition of the Arts. And we have a chance to be part of this initiative at Art Box Gallery in Christchurch until Friday 28th October. Art Box is the venue for the Christchurch Big Draw which has invited 20 New Zealand artists to show us just how important drawing is. How we simply cannot afford to let Art slip through the cracks. How the British Arts Education Trust believes  “Art can change lives”.

I went along to The Big Draw with my colleague and art-buddy, Masha. Debra McLeod was in attendance to share some arty gems with us – she is always so welcoming and knowledgeable. It was a struggle to drag Masha past Ina Johann’s Parallel Lines – mapping another life (and it was only exhibit 2 of 20), and I wanted my little drawing books to morph into the likes of Mario Luz’s Sketchbooks.

All the artists in this Big Draw exhibition are known in their field and for sure you will come away with a different slant on life. But here’s an idea – maybe the next Christchurch Big Draw could feature the sketchbooks of ordinary, everyday sketchers: the people who draw though they will never be known for it, and the children who are just starting out on drawing.

Back we meandered to Central Library Manchester – just that little bit altered. There to search out more beautiful drawing books. Paul Klee is reputed to have said that drawing  “is the act of  taking a line for a walk”. To-day Masha and I took a walk for the lines!

Roberta and Masha with Sandra Thomson’s Coral Reef and Fated.

Photo Hunt October: Canterbury Centennial Parade Float, 1951

Entry in the 2014 Christchurch City Libraries Photo Hunt by Merle Conaghan, Kete Christchurch PH14-142 CC-BY-NZ-SA NZ3.0

Float of the Floral Procession as part of the Canterbury Centennial held in Christchurch, February 1951.

Christchurch City Libraries has been running an annual Photo Hunt in conjunction with the city’s Heritage Week since 2008.  The 2016 Photo Hunt is running again from 1 – 31 October. During the month of October we will be posting a series of images from earlier Photo Hunts.

Enter the 2016 hunt online or at your local library.

Kete Christchurch is a collection of photographs and stories about Christchurch & Canterbury, past and present. Anyone can join and contribute.