Archive for the ‘Culture online’ Category

Last week, the team at NZLive.com celebrated our second birthday. And it’s been a great year for us.

Our traffic has more than doubled this year! So far in 2008 we’ve had 806,421 visits from New Zealanders and international tourists checking out New Zealand culture, compared to just 350,913 visits for the same period in 2007.

Our directory of cultural organisations is growing too. Each month new groups are asking to be listed so that they can enter their events information onto the website for free. There are now over 525 organisations in the directory - up from around 350 at launch.

We’ve also published more than 50 articles about New Zealand culture on the site. From New Zealand Book Month to Music Month, from cycling the Otago Rail Trail to Words on Wheels, from Waitangi Day to Big Day Out, from Auckland to Southland, from sculpture to sport - we’ve got New Zealand culture covered.

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It’s September and it’s New Zealand Book Month!

The aim of NZ Book Month is to support and encourage Kiwi writers to keep creating and to show off their talents to New Zealand readers. The organisers of NZ Book Month say, “Quite simply, the idea is to get more of us reading New Zealand books”.

www.NZHistory.net.nz is celebrating Book Month with ‘30 reasons to love New Zealand books and writing’. The site has a bookcase full of stories and inspiration for each day of the month, from stories of ‘Ponga and Puhihuia’ and ‘Hutu and Kawa’ the Pohutukawa Fairies to a history of The Listener and kids’ favourite Hairy Maclary – all brought to life with great images.

And don’t forget to check out your literary literacy by doing the New Zealand Book Month quiz.

The promise of publication and a $5000 reward for each of the six winners proved a magnet for writers in this year’s Six Pack Competition. Attracting a record 500 entries, the competition and resulting book are a highlight of NZ Book Month celebrated throughout New Zealand every September.

The 2008 winning entries – five selected by celebrity judges, one by the voting public – are announced on Sunday 31 August at the launch of NZ Book Month at Te Papa Tongarewa on Wellington’s waterfront. At the same time, copies of The Six Pack Three containing the six winning entries will hit the book stores.

Now in its third year, the Six Pack Competition is open to all New Zealanders and provides a chance for unknown writers to foot it with the literary heavyweights. In the first year, for instance, 15-year-old student Phoebe Wright was one of the winners – alongside well-known writers Briar Grace-Smith and Brian Turner. And last year, emerging writer Jennifer Lane saw her story in print with one by Charlotte Grimshaw, winner of the fiction prize at this year’s Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

Read the rest of this NZLive.com featured article here.

Let NZLive.com be your travel guide through the wonderful world of NZ art. There is plenty to look at in galleries and museums all over the country. We’ve got details of who is showing where, as well as links to artist’s sites, news and reviews.

We thought this month we would try a rundown of arty picks from around the country…..

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TheNewDowse was prepared for complaints about its exhibition, Assume Nothing.

It does, after all, feature intimate and, in some cases, naked portraits of people with alternative gender identity – exactly the sort of thing that is likely to create controversy.

But according to the exhibition curator, Claire Regnault, the Lower Hutt gallery has not received a single complaint since Assume Nothing opened in April.

“The reaction has been incredibly positive,” she says. “It’s obviously the right time for an exhibition like this – people are more open to talking about the subject.”

Read the rest of this NZLive.com featured article here.