Culture 101

Kristen Ng aka electronic artist Kaishandao has been touring Aotearoa this summer in support of her beat-filled album Homeland. She describes it as an “atemporal exploration through the places, spaces and people we call home.” Ng is Pōneke born-and-raised, but home for the past 10 years has been Chengdu, the captial of China’s Southwestern Sichuan province.  

It’s one of the great cultural events of Aotearoa New Zealand – certainly one of the longest established: Whānau Mārama New Zealand International Film Festival. But now, RNZ film critic and broadcaster Simon Morris says it seems a shadow of its former self. The last three years have been a challenge and now, the festival has been rocked by a series of major resignations in the last month.

2023 Billy T winner Abby Howells is taking her award winning show La Soupco to the Hamilton Arts Festival. 

It was love at first sight, or sound rather, for tabla master Basant Madhur, and Irish guitarist and bouzouki player Jon Sanders.

This weekend at Auckland Museum there is a rare overnight wananga to share matauranga Māori knowledge around an extraordinary object: Te Rā, the only customary Maori sail in existence. It has returned to Aotearoa for exhibition, after 200 years in storage at the British Museum. 

Every week Culture 101 heads to a creative correspondent out around the motu to gauge the cultural pulse of Aotearoa’s regions.  This week: Māori know it as Murihiku, “the last joint of the tail” but our southernmost graffiti artist Deow’s mission is to bring big painterly life to the walls of Southland’s towns. 

In Aotearoa, families celebrate the Lunar New Year in a variety of ways, says paediatrician, poet and playwright Renee Liang. For her own family, Chinese New Year's Eve is the occasion for a special, lavish meal that's "a little bit like Christmas lunch" in that everyone is expected to turn up at the parental home.

Our wrap-up of the week's arts and culture news.

Comedian and writer Jess Karamjeet is hoping her love of Neighbours will be the Trojan horse for her new show Redundant.

"We're all trying to kind of find some sound that links us together," celebrated New Zealand musician Neil Finn tells Culture 101 in an upcoming interview.

Aotearoa’s central arts funding body, Creative New Zealand, is majorly overhauling its funding structure, with eight new funds to open between March and August. The change follows the arts council’s admission its current arts grant system is no longer fit for purpose.  

What can chairs reveal to us about our history? There are sure to be seats in the new Objectspace exhibition and book The Chair: A story of design and making in Aotearoa that’ll cause you warm bodily pricks of memory.

Arts and culture news from RNZ's Culture 101.

The activists who defaced an English version of Ti Tiriti o Waitangi at Te Papa last year planned their actions very carefully, says Cally O’Neill from the social justice action group Te Waka Hourua. "There's a bunch of precedents for art as activism and that was exactly the direction that we were going," she tells Culture 101.

Prolific playwright Sam Brooks has not one, but two plays premiering in Wellington and Auckland in February for Pride. 

Each week, Culture 101 puts the spotlight on a different region to get the latest on the arts and culture scene. This week we’re at Waitangi. 

Kiwis will be watching the next season of White Lotus even more closely, following the casting of New Zealand actor Morgana O’Reilly (Housebound, Mean Mums, Wentworth). The hugely successful dark comedy will be set in Thailand for its third season, following earlier seasons in Hawaii and Italy. 

It may be 2024, but playwright Albert Belz (Ngati Porou, Ngā Puhi, Ngati Pokai) wants you to stretch like it's 1990. Dedicated to the pump of aerobics, Belz’s new play Hyperspace is an unapologetic 1990 nostalgia fest.

RNZ Culture 101 takes you behind the scenes and on a tour inside a giant bouncy castle complex with a difference.

News in the past week from the arts and culture sector

Each show, Culture 101 visits a different region to find out what's going on in the arts and culture scene. For our first show back this year, we're heading to Te Tairāwhiti and joining us is prolific Maori artist, musician, cultural advocate and the chief executive of the Te Tairāwhiti Arts Festival, Tama Waipara.

Everyone can sing. Not necessarily well, but everyone has the ability. The phenomenon Pub Choir has taken this idea and combined singing with comedy and beers.

For teenagers who grew up in the 2000s, Bring It On (2000) was a VHS and DVD staple. It would, without fail, be brought out during sleepovers. It felt like everyone knew the cheerleading chants. Kirsten Dunst was at the height of her fame. Closer to home, it’s serving as inspiration for a new theatre show Pring It On!, with the pom poms swapped out for Polyfest. The story goes behind the scenes, i...

Most of us at some point have worked for a company with an HR (Human Resources) Department. We’re familiar with the jargon and usually have brushes with the team entering and exiting a role.  But what about HR as a musical? 

Witi Ihimaera joins Mark Amery on Culture 101 to play ‘Fast Favourites’ - sharing some of his favourite current Aotearoa artists and cultural moments.   “We’re international now. It’s fantastic when you think about it - we had three New Zealand  films premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival… and Māori music in te reo has massively risen in the charts here. It’s poised to go global th...