Windbag: Vision for Wellington shows your blind points

The event of the political supergroup about the art scene of Wellington involved many CEOs and very few artists.

Windbag is Spinoff’s Wellington Issues column, written by Wellington’s editor Joel Macmanus. Sign up for Windbag Newsletter to receive columns earlier.

I was quite skeptical about Wellington’s vision, the supergroup of Rich and powerful Wellingtonians since it was released with a bright first page in the post. They made absurd allegations that their inherently political project is “non -political.” Sinead Boucher has transformed things into the group’s internal marketing department. His stars -filled debut event was devoid of vision and consisted of angry retirees complaining of bike paths.

Credit where credit is due: the group’s second event was more interesting and constructive than the first (although this is not saying much). “A Creative Conversation” was held on Thursday last week at Toi Whakaari in Newtown. He ran for almost two and a half hours, starting with a discussion panel followed by a public brainstorming exercise. At night, two PWC employees frantically wrote down notes in white frames; Vision for Wellington hired the consulting firm to gather its ideas and write its final “vision”.

The three panel participants were impressive. Muralist and sculptor Ariki Whakataka Brightwell presented some of his pieces and discussed the challenges of finding workshop spaces. NZ Art Show director Carla Russell stressed the importance of finding profitable models and working with the business sector. Wētā workshop founder Richard Taylor brought Wētābot005, an inspiring and terrifying ending robot. He remained on stage for most of the event, subtly raising his arms and chest every few seconds as if breathing.

The public was considerably lower than the multitude of 1,000 people in the first event, with the 200 -seat theater about three bedrooms. Most audience members were invited individually because the group considered them “important members of the Wellington art and creative community.”

When Mc Simon Bowden asked how many of the public were artists, about 10% raised their hands. When he asked how many had a second job to support his art, the number in half. There were many executives and directors of the board who manage artistic organizations, but very few people who make art.

At the beginning of the brainstorming session, Bowden invited six first -career artists (the younger people in the room from far) on stage to ask for “provocations” to the crowd to discuss. The results were a mixed bag. The crowd suggested a role funded by the council to help artists with administrative tasks, an arts center of the city, and a program of artists in residence in the government ministries.

One person adorned his recent visit to the British museum and suggested: “What we really need is a museum that incorporates our music and our art” (a fascinating suggestion for the city Pope is inside). Carolyn Henwood, a founding member of Circa Theater, wanted to create a unified arts industry group in the New Zealand beef + lamb or lamb from New Zealand. Richard Taylor suggested that the formation of a trade board was “the font or zespri of the art world.”

When you put several board directors in a room to solve a problem, it is not surprising that their idea is to create another corporate advice. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This is the fundamental problem of vision for the Wellington project so far. They are the upper class, talking to the upper class. People who will carry Wellington’s art scene are not sitting at the council meetings. They are doing dark shows in Valhalla and dismembered bats on bats. They are 21 -year -old Buskers, not 65 -year -olds.

Let’s ask the question that no one at the Vision For Wellington event asked: What makes the art scene of a great city?

In 2022, Columbia University researchers tried to answer this question with a study entitled to quantify the strength of music scenes using live event data. They used the number of live music shows for 100,000 people as a difficult indicator to measure the strength of a local music scene. Then they explored how this correlated with 28 socioeconomic indicators.

The most strongly correlated factors with prosperous musical scenes included the number of available performance spaces, affordable rents, high population density of 18 to 29 -year -olds and high rates of public transport, cycling and walking.

If promising artists are surrounded by their colleagues, they have many opportunities to present themselves and can afford to survive with a part -time job, they Have the best chance to develop your talent.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Wellington produced a huge number of innovative artists (Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement, Bret McKenzie, the Phoenix Foundation, Fat Freddy, The Black Seeds, Fly My Behties, Fur Patrol, Dai Henwood and Jo Randerson, to name a few). This is because growth conditions were ideal. There was twice as long as performance places in operation, and the rent was much cheaper.

In 2025, there are still many cool people doing interesting art (Shoutout Dartz, Dateline and Maria Williams), but they are doing this in an environment that makes it much harder to succeed.

Richard Taylor talked about live music as the core of the art scene. “Youth culture gathers around the brightest lights,” he said. Young artists “deserve a home,” but Taylor said they were concerned about the financial pressures they faced. He understands. I’m not sure that no one else at Vision for Wellington.

When an audience member made a passionate appeal for popular housing – “if people can’t afford to live in the city, that’s the question” – there was an embarrassing silence. So two people started clapping (I entered). Bowden hurriedly cut the applause and moved on, insisting that they were late and had no time to insist on the housing. The event lasted another 75 minutes after that.

Maybe Bowden was worried that the housing was very political. But these are political problems. Successive councils have It made it harder for locations to operate, limiting the opening hours and licensing of alcohol and repressing noise complaints. They created a shortage of housing, introducing zoning changes that restricted the construction of new houses.

The vision for Wellington, so far, is not willing or unable to deal with the role that the cost of the living crisis plays in Wellington’s evil. I suspect That’s because they don’t feel that.

Here is my vision practice suggestion for Wellington: Go talk to the union of the and tū musicians about your successful efforts to change the board’s noise control rules to places. Find out what they need most and use their power to expand their voices.

So go talk to a city for people, the Yimby group, led by young people, who led the fight for zoning reform to allow more housing. Use your considerable richness and influence to support real estate developers who want to build houses and oppose those who try to stop them. It would do much more than another two and a half hour talkfest in a room full of CEOs.