Free & Koha

Ko Te Ākau is a visual arts installation and curated performance programme for live and virtual spaces, created for group and solo performances, within a design accurate, site-specific installation of lighting, sound design and video projection. The project references the collaborative works of artists Ralph Hotere and Bill Culbert and serves as the inspiration for exploring the poetics of Te Ākau, the space where the ocean meets the land, where the horizon connects land, water and sky.

Opening night, spring time, longer days. What better way to celebrate than watching our city unfold after dark? Night Vision returns to kick off our 11 days of unmissable arts experiences.

An evening of music and theatre for and with rangatahi - transforming Kirby Lane into our Rangatahi Music Hub as part of Night Vision opening extravaganza!

What does it mean to be a young person in these uncertain times?

In collaboration with Arts, Design and Music students from NMIT, Whispers in the Streets shares rangatahi voices and reflections on uncertainty and what that means to them here and now, in Whakatū. Watch their visual arts interpretation unfold on bollards and listen to their whispers in unexpected places around town.

NUKU: The Exhibition features a selection of larger-than-life-size images of 14 of the kickass Indigenous wāhine who appear in Māori storyteller and photographer Qiane Matata-Sipu's extraordinary self-published book NUKU, which was a finalist for the 2022 Ockham NZ Book Award for Illustrated Nonfiction.

Did you know you can get arts on prescription? To look at a painting, read some poetry or immerse yourself in a performance may be exactly what the doctor ordered!

Let’s paint the streets of Whakatū in bright colours and showcase our community’s diversity and creative superpowers! We are working with local businesses to create displays of fantastic creations old and new - and we'd love you to contribute. Submit your own creations for the showcase or send us photos - we’d love to share them with far and wide!

Join ‘The Sensorium’, a mass movement performance for this year's Night Vision. Amateurs and professionals, experts and the curious - all are welcome to learn this simple choreography and be a part of this magical community event.

For this installation, led by their Artistic Director Karolina Serrano (from Colombia), the creative community weaves connections and create a space-filling installation of thread and hands coming together in the spirit of community, hope and unity. Watch it evolve over the course of the Festival.

In te ao Māori, tāne and wāhine once lived in balance with each other, and all other beings who originated from Ranginui and Papatūānuku. Gender and sexual diversity were normalised but colonialisation brought a strict gender hierarchy and static sexual identities. With the power of pūrākau and whakapapa, this exhibition attempts to draw forth mātauranga Māori of gender and sexuality.

We have an all-new Sculpture Symposium for you! Our friends at the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary are hosting Sculpt Nature, celebrating human connections to nature through the sculptural arts. The event has a strong conservation theme, with the participating sculptors creating works which use only natural materials and fiber and reflect on their relationship with nature.

We’re thrilled to collaborate with this inspiring kaupapa and host a second Viewfinder Window in our Festival office at Morrison Square, in addition to their other home on Bank Lane, between Trafalgar Street and Montgomery Square. 

Come see the view change in a street near you - unexpected experiences in otherwise familiar spaces! 

Inspired by the incredible THAW installation, we've put together a series of events and workshops across the Festival to continue the call to action, including an opportunity to contribute with visual artist Gabby O'Connor.

Throughout the festival don’t miss our innovative digital commission, which celebrates incredible Aotearoa writers, spoken word artists and storytellers exploring the theme, ‘Belonging’. The series will be headlined by Ko Wai Koe (from whose waters do you flow?), a spoken word/waiata/music performance by Motueka-based collective, Te Oro Hā, and will be presented throughout the festival, for free, via our digital stages and online.

Want Whakatū to have more public artwork which speaks to what matters to our rangatahi in this moment in time? We may have just the thing for you!

In partnership with Nelson College, artist Nerys Ngaruhe will work with local rangatahi to co-create a mural on Broads Field, celebrating toi Māori, street art and youth voices in our community.

High above the harbour, suspended by a crane on 2.7 tonnes of ice, a figure - isolated on a melting platform - struggles for balance. As sunset approaches what will be left? We are confronted and inspired by their determination to adapt and survive. There's no time to waste.

Over eight hours in one day, Legs On The Wall brings death-defying beauty to the current climate crisis, with THAW.

A guided exhibition tour with Local Audio Describer Ange Pearson of selected works from Te Papa’s summer exhibition - Rita Angus: New Zealand Modernist | He Ringatoi Hou o Aotearoa.

Free but bookings required.

As part of our ongoing commitment to artists living in our region, in 2022 we are proud to gift a space to an artist for a two-week paid residency to progress a new piece, deep dive on a particular aspect of their mahi, or just trial a whole lot of new ideas.

In 1968, legendary Aotearoa-born composer and deep listener Annea Lockwood set fire to an irreparable upright piano on the banks of the River Thames in London.