FESTA

FAB FESTA – My five picks for FESTA 2018

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We love FESTA! This Labour weekend “vibrant biennial celebration of urban creativity and community” is one of Ōtautahi’s most cool and unique events. It’s food for the mind, eyes, and soul. That is particularly apt in 2018 as FESTA gets foody – FESTA 2018 is all about architecture, design – and food. Contribute to the Pledgeme FESTA2018 by midday today (Thursday 27 September) and you’ll help the traditional Saturday evening mega-event street party FEASTA! be the best yet.

There are more than 55 events planned for FESTA 2018, here are some of my picks:

FEASTA

The big FREE street party is on Saturday 20 October from 5 to 11pm. It’s a FESTA tradition to activate different parts of the city, and this time Mollett Street (which runs between Colombo Street and Durham Street South) is the place to be.

There will be the stunning installations we’ve come to love at the FESTA party. The 2018 works have been created by more than 130 design and architecture students from across Australia and New Zealand, as well as NZIA and NZILA Canterbury branch members, in collaboration with Creative Director Barnaby Bennett. There will be loads of whānau fun, music, performances, art, markets, and plenty of yummy delights. One of the excellent initiatives on the night is Kono for Kai: 100 hand woven harakeke kono (small food baskets) filled with native plant seedlings and seeds will be available to the public in exchange for a koha of kai (non-perishable goods only please). All koha received will be gifted to a community group for distribution to those in need in the community. Read all about it.

FESTA at Tūranga

Ka rawe! Your new central library Tūranga will be open when FESTA is on, and it is the venue for:

Produce a City

Saturday 20 October and Sunday 21 October 1 to 4pm; Monday 22 October (Labour Day), 10am to 1pm at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū
Pop in to this drop-in session and make a cityscape out of food! Use the colourful clay provided to sculpt a house or a building in the shape of fruit and vegetables and add it to the map. Suitable for children aged 7+. FREE

Last Call: Christchurch’s Drinking and Dining Past

Sunday 21 October 6pm to 7.30pm. Meet at Victoria Square. FREE.
Take a trip back in time and explore our culinary past. Join Nik Mavromatis as he hosts a guided walking tour around central Christchurch, starting with Ōtautahi’s oldest market square. Nik then takes you to former hospitality sites and reminisces over the cafes, bars and restaurants that were previously part of the fabric of our city.

This is a mere taster, visit the FESTA 2018 to explore all the events on offer.

FESTA information

How you can help

Contribute to the Pledgeme FESTA2018 by midnight tonight Thursday 27 September.

Take a look back at the awesomeness of FESTA

FESTA 2016 – Lean Means

FESTA 2014 – CityUps

CityUps - FESTA Festival of Transitional Architecture

FESTA 2013 – Canterbury Tales

Canterbury Tales - FESTA

FESTA 2012 – LuxCity

Luxcity

Read our 2016 interview with FESTA director Jessica Halliday: Imagining a different Christchurch – Jessica Halliday and FESTA 2016

Podcast – Resources in the city with FESTA

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Speak Up Kōrerotia logoChristchurch 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

Find out more in our collection

Cover of Building with secondhand stuff Cover of Junkyard science Cover of Outsmart waste Cover of Guerilla furniture design Cover of Economies of recycling Cover of Recycled home Cover of Tiny houses built with recycled materials

More about Speak up – Kōrerotia

The show is also available on the following platforms:

FESTA is for (book)Lovers

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Amazing art and architecture ahoy! FESTA is on this weekend. But FESTA is not just about eyeboggling installations. Emma Johnson of FESTA and Freerange Press has some hot tips for people who are into books and ideas.

Talking Books

Saturday 22 October 2pm to 4pm at In Situ Photo Project, just outside of Scorpio Books, 120 Hereford Street

Talking Books
Freerange Press brings you Talking Books. Instead of borrowing a book from the library, why not select a passionate expert and pick their brains? You get a twenty-minute, one-on-one conversation with a human talking book. Email info@projectfreerange.com to book your conversation. Sessions are at: 2pm, 2.20pm, 2.40pm, 3pm, 3.20pm and 3.40pm.

Here’s your lineup of Talking Books:

  • One Good Thing About Music with Jesse Newman, former history of music lecturer, defunct record-store employee and amasser of records
  • Birthing Well: Essential Information with Julie Richard, midwife and educator
  • Drawing Life: Buildings, People and Places with Byron Kinnaird, Phd architecture student
  • Creative Cities with Coralie Winn, co-founder of Gap Filler
  • The Accidental Restauranteur with Emma Mettrick, owner of Twenty-Seven Steps
  • Loving the Recovery; Hating the Recovery with Barnaby Bennett, designer and publisher
  • How to Buy Train Tickets in India with Emma Johnson, editor and avid traveller.

Subscribe to the Facebook event: Talking books.

The Bureaucratic Love Session

Sunday 23 October 1pm to 4pm at Space Academy, 371 St Asaph Street

Freerange Press is running a symposium called The Bureaucratic Love Session (1-4pm, Sunday 23 October) at Space Academy, 371 St Asaph Street. Different voices come together to instigate and nurture a dialogue around the means and ends of institutions, asking the questions: Do institutions matter? And if so, how can we take better care of them? How can we help improve existing institutions in Christchurch, globally and in our own lives?

Subscribe to the Facebook event: The Bureaucratic Love Session

Book Launch: Freerange Vol. 11 Institutional Love

Sunday 23 October 4pm to 6pm at Space Academy, 371 St Asaph Street

This series of speakers is followed by the launch of Freerange Vol. 11: Institutional Love, which explores and advocates for a more nuanced and caring approach to institutions – fitting in with this year’s FESTA theme of making the most of the means we already have available to us.

Subscribe to the Facebook event: Launch of FreerangeVol. 11: Institutional Love

Book out and read in: FESTA - Tree Houses for Swamp dwellers
Book out and read in: FESTA – Tree Houses for Swamp dwellers, FESTA 2014, Flickr 2014-10-26-IMG_3228

PechaKucha Night Christchurch

Monday 24 October 7:30pm to 10:00pm at Christchurch City Council, 53 Hereford Street.

PKN_CHCH_29 line up includes:

Molly Van Hart// Project manager at Life in Vacant Spaces and fan girl of succulents// on making space
Hannah Watkinson// Photographer and curator// in situ
Lindsay Chan// Geospatial Extraordinaire// on the many murals of Christchurch
Summer Hess//Writer and Project Manager// the antidote is community

FESTA information

Read our interview with FESTA director Jessica Halliday: Imagining a different Christchurch – Jessica Halliday and FESTA 2016

Podcast – Food in the city with FESTA

Mo-moLeave a comment

Speak Up Kōrerotia logoChristchurch 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 urban food initiatives in Christchurch and issues such as –

  • Environmental and social sustainability of urban food projects
  • What defines ‘foraging’
  • Connections between ecological and political systems and health
  • The growth in urban food practices
  • Food justice
  • Urban food activities during FESTA

The panel for this show includes host Sally Carlton, Peter Langlands from Wild Capture – wild foods and foraging – NZ, Bailey Peryman from Cultivate Christchurch, and Chloe Waretini from Ōtākaro Orchard and Food Resilience Network discussing urban food activities and the overarching concept of food justice.

Transcript of the audio file

Find out more with our resources

Cover of A forager's treasury Cover of Find it, eat it Cover of A field guide to the native edible plants of New Zealand Cover of The permaculture city Cover of Rurbanite Cover of Julia's guide to edible weeds and wild green smoothiesCover of Dandelion hunter Cover of Radical gardening: Politics, idealism & rebellion in the garden

More about Speak up – Kōrerotia

The show is also available on the following platforms:

Imagining a different Christchurch – Jessica Halliday and FESTA 2016

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FESTA is a “biennial weekend celebration of urban creativity” and one of the coolest events on Ōtautahi’s calendar. It is on this Labour weekend, kicking off with the SuperWOW disco at the Dance-o-mat on Friday 21 October, and ending with PechaKucha on Monday 24 October at 7.30pm. The unmissable big event is Lean Means on Saturday 22 October.

I had a chat to FESTA’s director Jessica Halliday to get a flavour of FESTA 2016.

What is FESTA?

Jessica Halliday

It is about creating a collective positive experience for the people of Christchurch and visitors.

FESTA helps people reconnect to the central city, to rebuild that severed relationship. A big street party is a positive experience, and connects them with places that are regenerating. It catalyses changes in architecture and design. The collective making of a big project like this is a microcosm of the cooperative way we can work together.

What’s on at FESTA 2016

Lean Means is on Saturday 22 October, and is the biggest event of FESTA with 10,000 to 15,000 people expected. There will be 18 projects to experience. The tallest is around 6 metres and most are about 4 metres. Some will be integrated into existing structures.

There is a full programme of events with a lot of workshops, speakers, and a symposium on the resuse of materials (organised by Rekindle working with Objectspace), and a session with artist Hannah Beehre on drawing Christchurch architecture. Events for kids include creative junk and mutant monster workshops.

If you want to experience a Human Library, Talking Books and Freerange Press bring together a collection of passionate experts on a range of topics including the state of the city,music, and brewing beer. You can book a twenty-minute, one-on-one conversation with a human talking book.

Utilising waste streams – Sustainability, Re-use

Jos de Krieger of Superuse Studios in Rotterdam is a specialist in urban installations and interventions and the creative director of FESTA 2016. He developed the concept, visited, and gave lectures and design workshops, and also met with New Zealand and Australian studios. The idea is to get a brief and a budget, then look for waste materials in the vicinity to be reused. Using such materials requires a lot of research.

The materials for Lean Means are lightweight – plastics, cardboard, bottles, post-consumer plastic bags and are local to the studios. The pavilion for the Ōtākaro Orchard is made of hundreds of metres of frost cloth from the Big Barn in Sydney – it can come over easily on the plane with the students as it’s so light.

Re-use is part of what FESTA is now. Students were re-using stuff anyway, with one of 2014’s projects using plastic bottle rejects on their way to China for recycling. They went on to be recycled after appearing at FESTA CityUps.

FESTA closes the loop with connections back to sustainability all the way through. Cassels will be there, and they are working on cleaning up the Heathcote, and Punky Brewster have a focus on reducing water in beer sales. There will be a second hand market with upcycled things for sale.

We are trying as best as we can to make it consistent.

CityUps - FESTA Festival of Transitional Architecture
CityUps, FESTA 2014, Flickr 2014-10-25-IMG_3049

Art and architecture

CreativeNZ funding has enabled three artists from three different disciplines to be involved: Juliet Arnott of Rekindle, artist Julia Morison and movement artist Julia Harvie.

Julia Morison has been integrated into a team from Massey University, School of Design at the College of Creative Arts. Her philosophy is that art shouldn’t be a “brooch pinned on at the end”, and that artists should be involved in informing the development of projects.

Moving artist Julia Harvie will suspending herself of the COCA gallery gantry and weave herself a nest from coppiced hazel shoots. The performance teases out ideas of making a city that nurtures children, and what parents can do to influence the creation of that environment.

Juliet Arnott is a strategic advisor to FESTA and is involved in the The Zero Waste Village of Resourcefulness:

Skilled craftspeople undertake high quality crafts that are zero waste in nature in a village of temporary shelters. These structures are designed and fabricated from waste materials by Ara students …

These three artists will appear at CoCAcabana on Friday night.

CityUps - FESTA Festival of Transitional Architecture
CityUps, FESTA 2014, Flickr 2014-10-25-IMG_3154

Why FESTA?

Experience a re-imagined Christchurch. Imagine a different Christchurch and present it as an experience, instead of a city made of renders.

What it could be, as well as what it is.

FESTA information

How you can help Lean Means

Help FESTA transform Christchurch by supporting Lean Means, and share in a positive reimagining of the city – full of lights, colours and people. This Labour Weekend, we will transform central Christchurch with a large-scale reimagined city called Lean Means, live for one night only, free and open to all, on Saturday 22 October.

FESTA 2014 – CityUps

CityUps - FESTA Festival of Transitional Architecture

FESTA 2013 – Canterbury Tales

Canterbury Tales - FESTA

FESTA 2012 – LuxCity

Luxcity

Libraries and reading

As a kid, Jessica went every week to Hornby Library. Her main preoccupations were:

Reading, running around the farm, reading.

CoverShe enjoys Charles Todd’s Ian Rutledge stories and is a keen fan of British comedy, especially panel shows like “Have I got news for you” and “Would I lie to you”.

Labour weekend is FESTA time

Donna3 Comments

FESTA – The Festival of Transitional Architecture – takes place over Labour Weekend. Remember LuxCity in 2012, and Canterbury Tales in 2013? If you went, you’ll be dead set keen to experience FESTA again.
Luxcity Canterbury Tales - FESTA Luxcity
This year’s big event is CityUps:

Over 250 students from CPIT, Unitec and The University of Auckland transform two blocks of Christchurch’s central city with towering, physical installations to create their vision of a future Christchurch. Beneath these outrageous designs are buzzing urban spaces where pop-up cafes, performance spaces, an all-ages-youth venue, a night market, dance hall, community bike workshop and bike light disco, bars, street games and much more operate.

There is a plethora of other events on too – including this library one:

Book Out and Read In, Sun 26 Oct 11am-1pm

Come along to Julia Morison’s wonderful Tree Houses for Swamp Dwellers, on the corner of Colombo St and Gloucester St.  Get a book out from the mobile library or from the nearby Central Library Peterborough – or bring your own. Read amongst the trees of this sculptural installation. Bring your lunch and enjoy a quiet inner-city experience. Read in, chill out.

Here’s me giving the Tree Houses a test read (I’m reading Once in A Lifetime: City-building After Disaster in Christchurch).

Reading at Tree houses for swamp dwellers, Gloucester Street

Other picks:

  • Jelloucity Come and create a colourful, glowing city that is supposed to shake and wobble.
  • Poetica project #5, ‘Emerge’ is a calligraphic, three-dimensional line of poetry by Irish poet William Yeats floating in the Avon. Readings and artist-led liquid poetry workshops accompany the installation. You can write your own liquid poetic message – brushes and water are provided.
  • Picture Palace Parade Charlie Gates, cinephile and senior Press reporter, leads a group on an immersive tour of the old cinema sites of Cathedral Square – a walk through history. This is followed by an outdoor screening of a classic movie.
  • Super WOW disco

See the full programme on the FESTA site.

FESTA’s Canterbury Tales: Better living through puppetry

omgitsgrantccl3 Comments

The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey ChaucerOf weeping and wailing, care and other sorrow

I know enough, at eventide and morrow.
The Merchant, The Canterbury Tales

In a figurative sense, shoulders play an important role in our lives, with most of us at one point or another providing a shoulder on which to cry, or to lean. In more than one instance I have shouldered the blame and the burden, not to mention given out my fair share of cold shoulders and, on rare occasions, I have been known to put my shoulder to the grind.

It is only recently that I have taken on the role of a literal shoulder, which I will be doing this Labour Weekend as part of FESTA, the Festival of Transitional Architecture, which runs from 25th-28th October. FESTA is entering into its second year of making life in earthquake-damaged Christchurch exciting and vibrant by showcasing a wide variety of creative projects, with last year’s launch attracting 30,000 people back into the heart of a broken city still finding its bearings.

2012’s LUXCITY wowed residents and visitors alike with its wondrous light installations, and the centrepiece for 2013 also looks set to set many jaws agape in amazement. In an appropriately-appropriated re-telling of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, an epicly-sized representation of The Merchant, who will be controlled by nine puppeteers, flanked by a handful of less-epic-but-still-very-impressive friars, will lead an eye-popping procession through the city, beginning at the Bridge of Remembrance and finishing in the Square. And yours truly will be playing the role of The Merchant’s right shoulder, lest you thought my introduction was mere padding.

The details are far too delicious to divulge, but in my rehearsal with the Free Theatre team I have been getting to grips with the fine art of replicating lust, resignation, and frustration via the medium of a bamboo pole attached to a billowy shoulder, which ranks high in the list of sentences I never imagined I’d type.

Getting FESTA puppets ready Getting FESTA puppets ready Getting FESTA puppets ready

The Canterbury Tales procession will be in full swing on the evenings of Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th October from 8:30pm onwards. We entreat you all to don your best carnival costumes, bring a tambourine or some maracas, and join in the festivities to help us cast off the recent years of weeping, wailing, and other sorrow.

In the meantime, please enjoy the following:

Getting FESTA puppets ready