The Hub at Toi Poneke
Submitted by Wellington City Council - City Arts on Sat, 22/11/2008 - 1:55am.
An Arts Hub at Toi Poneke
[update submitted 13 August 2009]
In February 2010 Wellington City Council will launch The Hub at Toi Poneke - Wellington Arts Centre. The Hub will be Wellington’s one stop shop for anyone wanting information on developing and participating in arts projects, events and activity.
The Hub will be an interactive space – with casual meeting space, information and reference material, computers and discussion boards – designed so that anyone can access and contribute information and activity.
How you might use the Hub?
- Use the Hub to find out about classes and training opportunities, career development, projects to participate in, networks, other artists, advisory services, jobs, arts organisations, mentors, funding and other resources for realising your project
- Participate in creative conversation around current issues and arts and culture – live, on-line or on one of the work/ideas-in-progress boards
- Attend workshops or seminars
- Use the information boards to skill swap, to resource swap, to find people and to share useful information
- Promote your activity, classes, network, exhibition or performance
- Use the Hub as a casual meeting space, browse the resource library, talk to other people using the Hub
How you can contribute to the success of the Hub
- Get your information and activity happening in the Hub
- Host a discussion around a topic you’re interested in
- Share your ideas/work-in-progress on one of the conversation boards
- Set up a discussion group or network
- Host the Hub for a day or half day and hot-desk at one of our computers
- Feed in to the resources – donate good books to the resource library, post your information, share your skills and knowledge with others
For more information on the Hub contact Briar Monro [briar.monro@wcc.govt.nz]
What do you think of this idea – what would you like to see in the Hub?
Comments
The above is a very brief outline of the proposed Hub at Toi Poneke. The need for a resource, meeting and ongoing conversation space was a key issue to emerge from the Mapping the Future of the Arts hui held in Wellington in 2008. Wellington City Council recognises that it has a key role to play in the facilitation of collaboration and partnership building across the arts sector and into the wider community.
A hub sounds good for the city. Critical mass theory for arts creativity. When I left the capital some years ago I left behind a family of large paintings on buildings that eventually got swallowed by progress and to many people the idea that art was big, out there and alive in their daily urban jungle could easily seem like a dream they once had.
To get people to connect is to put big art in their urban face, big enough by quality to compete in an otherwise overwhelming architecture of powerlessness. Big art acts like islands of home-grown humanity within the context of our artificial domain and a blizzard of advertising.
Big art on buildings meet people on a level playing field. They are free to interact but also folks come to feel they own them and it lights up the ubiquitous face of civic and cultural identity.
The hub is a good idea and i hope it leads to Wellingtonians living with lots of art around them in their daily life so they have an opportunity to realise that art is not just a novelty but an active part of daily life.
It seems ironic to me, especially in the Capital where our houses of Government are, that nowhere in the blue pages of any NZ phone book does it mention Arts. So this is the measure of where arts fit into our system of NZ life. Yeah right ...little or no mention, no-one home.
B nice.