The Big ‘A’ Awards last night paid tribute to the often unsung heroes providing artistic opportunities to people with limited access.

The NZ Affordable Art Trust is pleased to announce the 10 finalists for the Signature Piece Art Award.

A flashing keyhole, an abandoned trapeze, a miniature temple or semaphore shadows on the footpath – expect the unexpected from new contemporary artworks in Auckland’s Learning Quarter from July 31.

Dean Buchanan is holding his first major solo exhibition since 2004 at the Depot Artspace opening on Saturday July 24.

Auckland’s Toi Ora Live Art Trust has won the Big ‘A’ Creative Space Award, for providing access to the arts for people with limited access opportunities.

Three diverse musical works have been announced as finalists for the SOUNZ Contemporary Award. “It is a little like comparing apples with soufflé with pizza! These three works once more highlight the depth and diversity of musical composition in New Zealand,” says SOUNZ Executive Director Julie Sperring.

'Fragile Shadows' by minu takes the viewer into an imaginary world where creatures meet in the shadows of long lost memories, remembering friendship and loss. The artwork includes new work on paper, wood and canvas as well as mixed media.

Shaun Lee, a 'Semi Veteran' since he saw 123 Klan and Shepard Fairey in 2003, previews the line up for Semi Permanent 2010.

A beautiful story weaving the beauty of original waiata with a story of love and music comes to West Auckland as part of Going West Books and Writers Festival 2010.

Creative New Zealand will introduce two new and complementary multi-year funding programmes from January 2012.

Na zdorovje! Stephen Sinclair’s directorial debut Russian Snarkis like cheap vodka; despite its shortcomings, it will still get you drunk.

More than 112 artists, performers and writers will take part in this year’s Metonymy project.

Find the dance of your dreams - the 2010 Body Festival kicks off with Speed Dancing on 24 September followed by two jam-packed, high-energy weeks of community workshops, NZ’s best dance companies, guest tango artists from Argentina, film, exhibitions and more.

Absurdly comic, politically scathing, and utterly brilliant. Elia Suleiman’s satirical farce of the Israel-Palestine conflict is an acerbic, implacable film, finding absurd comedy in the tumult and oppression of occupation.

Selectors have chosen 85 players to make up the 2010 NZSO National Youth Orchestra, with the youngest aged just 12 and the eldest 25.

As I was leaving the cinema, I heard an old lady, who obviously had not liked the film, remark that she wished she’d just stayed home and watched television.  Just as it is a recurring accusation in the film that it is the habit of women – methinks the lady doth protest too much.  Perhaps she was looking for an opiate, and was not prepared for a revelation. 

Claudia Gunn of has won her second APRA Children’s Song of the Year award with ‘Home Sweet Home’.

Wellington artists Judi Jenkins and Lucy Jerram Moore share a passion for expressing the experiences of New Zealanders separated by war.

To partake in I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You, a road-movie that is a collaboration between directors Marcelo Gomes and Karim Ainouz, is to lie in the back seat of a beat-up sedan, feet dangling out the window as you make your way across the Sertao scrubland of northeastern Brazil.

Peta Mathias' new TV series, "Peta Unplugged in Marrakech" debuts on NZ TV screens this month. Set in exotic Morocco, a country famous for indulging the senses, the series offers fresh perspectives on a culture via its cuisine.

SOUNZ the Centre for New Zealand Music, is moving to the literal hub of creative activity in the capital.

In Poetry, Lee-Chang Dong seems to deliberately leave a space, an absence for the audience to find its own meanings.  It is a rarity in cinema that deserves to be praised.

Margaret Oldham was an early collector of contemporary New Zealand studio glassware but in the early 1990s switched her focus to Victorian and Edwardian pressed glass tableware and has assembled a collection of over 500 pieces.

Kalee Jackson, the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery’s Graphic Designer has been shortlisted for this year’s Awa Press Young Designer of the Year Award.