Culture 101

Jo Ann Firestone is a  teller of tales, a producer, host, and co-founder of Couch Stories. A sold out storytelling series that has taken the Nelson Arts fest by storm. 

Rather than Boys II Men, it’s Boys II Middle Age: playwright and actor Michael Galvin has written a play about boy bands, with a difference.

Museums are really theatres of political power, says Maia Nuku, curator of Oceania at one of the biggest: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  Nuku (Ngāi Tai) is interested in the way museums can provide greater access and in the Big Apple that has meant creating a home for Māori and Pacific Island peoples and artists. 

Wellington artist Bailee Lobb has had a "combative" relationship with sleep her whole life. In the upcoming performance-installation How do you sleep at night? she'll use a range of "non-pharmaceutical sleep aids" to try and nod off at a Nelson gallery.

In 2016 Aotearoa lost architect and teacher Rewi Thompson too young. But as an innovative new book reveals -  Rewi: Āta haere, kia tere - Thompson’s legacy lives on not only in buildings and public projects but also his imaginative drawings and teaching. 

Award winning drag queen Spankie Jackzon joins Maggie Tweedie for Culture 101’s regional wrap to spill the tea on what makes Palmy so bloody balmy.

Peter Porteous is a musician based in Dunedin who organises an experimental music festival called Lines of Flight. The idea was bred from a friendship he shared with mate and late collaborator Peter Stapleton for years. Maggie Tweedie asks Peter Porteous about some of the lesser known and more mesmerizing music coming from The South. While he selects the sounds that showcase the analgoue and abstr...

Samoan New Zealand dancer John Vaifale (Lalovaea and Solosolo) is packing his bags to head to Germany and represent Aotearoa at the Red Bull Dance Your Style World Finals on November 4. 

From the opening scenes of the second series of Raised by Refugees - the comedy sitcom created by award winning comedian Pax Assadi - monocultural views of New Zealand society are challenged with humour. 

An award-winning playwright, actor, musician and founder of the Maori Sidesteps, Jamie McCaskill’s latest play Two Guitars is a musical journey examining those of a  generation of Māori find themselves lost who have grown up without te reo and tikanga and find themselves lost. 

In a 2023 election countdown special ‘Carcass’ brings you lively banter on where culture and politics is and isn’t meeting on the hustings.

Madison Emond from Rhode Island has been building pinhole cameras from clay in Wellington’s Kaiwharawhara stream. Her photographic work is a vessel for the natural environment, capturing life by and under water by wrapping film around glow worms and river stones.

Artist Taloi Havini began life in Bougainville but fled with her family to Australia aged 9 due to a civil war which claimed 15,000 lives. 

Every week on Culture 101 we check the pulse of a different area of Aotearoa. This week, we’re off to Hastings, ahead of the Hawkes Bay Arts Festival 13-29 October.

In Still Here director Litia Tuiburelevu takes us inside the homes, centres and churches that carry forward  the different island community's stories and cultural traditions.  

 George Nelson is a New Zealander living in Japan with a passion for haiku, techno and fashion. The pages of, The Techno Kiwi reveal a delightful fusion of both Japanese and New Zealand cultures, using native New Zealand birds, techno and hip hop, Japanese and English.

Uproar, a new movie inspired by the Springbok Tour of the 1980s comes with a star-studded cast - Julian Dennison, James Rolleston, Minnie Driver, Rhys Darby, and a scene-stealing role from Julian's mum, Mabelle Dennison. 

Best known as a vampire, and lately, a goth, actor and comedian Johnny Brugh has been leaving us well amused since his time as one half of comedy duo Sugar and Spice way back in the ‘90s. A regular screen scene-stealer, Brugh’s numerous film credits include Deacon in What We Do In The Shadows and god Rapu in Thor: Love and Thunder. Next year he’ll appear in the Australian version of hit TV comedy...

Touring to five regional centres across the North Island from 6 to 25 October Upu sees performances by seven leading actors of almost 40 texts by Māori and Pacific Island writers. Among the writers is acclaimed artist Briar Grace-Smith (Ngā Puhi and Ngāti Hau). Best known as a playwright and screenwriter, Grace-Smith wrote, starred in and co-directed hit feature film Cousins, and also recently dir...

A new, sumptuous Auckland University Press book Gordon Walters reveals the diversity of the painter’s exploration of form beyond the koru, and the remarkable diversity of influences that synthesised in his work. 

After a career spanning almost six decades, Alanis Obomsawin is still busy working on her 56th and 57th film aged 91. 

Every week on Culture 101 we check the pulse of a different area of Aotearoa. This week it's Waikato.

Most trends on social media, have their moment in the spotlight, then the next one comes along. But some trends catch on and stick around. One of those is ‘Girl Dinner’.

Just released, Henrietta Bollinger’s debut essay collection, Articulations published by Tender Press speaks to their experiences as queer, disabled and as a twin..

Liberty - Herekoretanga by artist Wendy Hannah is a camellia chandelier made from 31 thousand 872 recycled plastic bottles - each one representing the number of signatures on the petitions presented to Parliament in the 1890s.