Culture 101 - podcast cover

Culture 101

RNZ•www.rnz.co.nz
Society & Culture
Perlina Lau hosts a weekly show about creativity and culture in Aotearoa.
Last refreshed: ⓘ
Follow this podcast in the Metacast mobile app to refresh it and see new episodes.
Follow on
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
RSS
YouTube
Overcast
Pocket Casts
Episodes.fm
Download Metacast podcast app
Podcasts are better in Metacast mobile app
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more

Episodes

Guitar maker and carver Nui Stretch: Two parallel careers in wood

Raised in the countryside, north of Tamaki Nui-A-Rua and Dannevirke in the lower North Island, Nui Stretch has the distinction of having two parallel careers in wood. One as a luthier, or guitar maker - trained by some of the world’s best - and the other as a carver, now based at Karehana Bay, Porirua near his tūrangawaewae, Hongoeka marae.

Mar 31, 2024•28 min

Travelling through Asian and Pasifika cultures in batik with Rozana Lee

20 years ago, artist Rozana Lee lost her mother, relatives, childhood friends and her family home in Aceh, Indonesia in the Boxing Day Tsunami. More than 200,000 people died in Indonesia, her mother Rosna among those left unaccounted for. Lee’s father Karimun survived. At the time Rozana Lee was living in Singapore, working as a banker and had just given birth to her first child. The tragedy led to a huge life shift. She left Singapore and her established career to focus on her art and her famil...

Mar 31, 2024•22 min

12-year-olds in NZ highly engaged in arts and culture

A new report highlights a high level of engagement with arts, culture and recreation among 12-year-olds across Aotearoa New Zealand. Released by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, the data is based on the University of Auckland’s Growing Up in New Zealand longitudinal research study.

Mar 31, 2024•15 min

Fashion designer Jimmy D and the fight against the dull and turgid hick town

Jimmy D is welcome proof that fashion needn’t be all glitz and glam. It can relate as much to a grungier street reality as the cocktail party or old school business attire. Further it can at last be androgynous. Jimmy D has playfully extended everything from the hoodie and mesh shirt as clothes worn regardless of gender.

Mar 30, 2024•14 min

An unlikely pairing? K-pop meets Pasifika

At first glance it may seem like an unlikely combination - Korean pop music and Pasifika youth - but as a new documentary on The Spinoff demonstrates, there’s a synergy and understanding. K-pop is a distinctive form of contemporary popular music originating in South Korea, that has gone global in appeal. The first recorded use of the term was in 1999.

Mar 30, 2024•15 min

Making Mischief with West End and Broadway star Nancy Zamit

West End and Broadway wasn’t the dream when UK theatremaker Nancy Zamit co-founded Mischief Theatre in 2008, but the idea of being paid to do improv was. For this group of drama school students and friends, that would have been enough. But 16 years later, 2024 is perhaps the first time Zamit feels she can take a step back and have a breather.

Mar 24, 2024•20 min

Regional Wrap: Francisca Griffin in Port Chalmers

Port Chalmers in Ōtepoti Dunedin has long been a haven for artists as well as seafarers. It’s an active commercial port and these days the locals also welcome flocks of cruise ship visitors. While that provides its opportunities for the arts, artists are here as much to create as present, relishing the community and beauty of the surrounding environment to develop their work.

Mar 24, 2024•7 min

Travelling from North Yorkshire to Aotearoa via the sun: theatremaker Alexander Wright

For North Yorkshire’s Alexander Wright theatre making is a way of bringing together the very local with the much larger universe he believes we need to feel connected to. In his latest touring show, with longtime collaborator musician Phil Grainger, Helios, the immensity of the sun is brought down to earth with the use by Wright as sole performer of little more than Grainger’s soundscape and a range of Ikea-bought lamps.

Mar 24, 2024•16 min

Arts News Sunday 24 March

Weekly arts and culture news from Aotearoa New Zealand with Perlina Lau and Mark Amery

Mar 23, 2024•3 min

Māoriland Film Festival Wrap

The Māoriland Film Festival is being held in Ōtaki on the Kapiti Coast this week 20-24 March. It's Aotearoa's annual International Indigenous film festival in a town where Māori culture thrives.

Mar 23, 2024•5 min

Rugby becomes art: a scrum suspended in time

Still Lives - Auckland is a live performance artwork combining what are sometimes considered opposite ends of the spectrum; rugby and art. Following two weeks of rehearsal, the artwork will be at the Concert Chamber at the Auckland Town Hall on Saturday 30th March.

Mar 23, 2024•15 min

Best of the Fest #5: A very old man with enormous wings, The Sun and the Wind, Aiga and in the thick of Dunedin Fringe

It may be the fifth and final episode of Best of the Fest but festivals across Aotearoa have not been slowing down. Culture 101’s Perlina Lau in Tāmaki Makaurau is joined by playwright and dramaturg, Nathan Joe, actor, voice artist and intimacy coordinator, Romy Hooper and comedian, writer, actor, producer and director, Tom Sainsbury. Mark Amery is joined by critic Hannah Molloy in Ōtepoti Dunedin.

Mar 21, 2024•49 min

Regional Wrap: Ngāmotu New Plymouth’s Fin Rah Zel at WOMAD

For a band from Taranaki, making the WOMAD lineup is a dream come true. For Ngāmotu New Plymouth indie group, Fin Rah Zel, this weekend is it. Known for its outlier music and visual art scene, the band joins Mark Amery at WOMAD to talk about Ngāmotu for this week’s Regional Wrap.

Mar 17, 2024•7 min

Aiga: Lusi Faiva’s disability-led Pasifika show on her life in her own words

In Samoan, aiga means family. Not just your immediate family but your wider circle. It could be through blood, marriage or even an adopted connection. It’s also the name and central theme of Lusi Faiva’s new disability and Pasifika-led show with Touch Compass, premiering at the 2024 Auckland Arts Festival.

Mar 16, 2024•9 min

The 12-year-olds who meet a mountain in Rachel House's first feature

There are four shining stars on screen in the new joyous and heartfelt Aotearoa New Zealand film The Mountain - the directorial debut of acclaimed actor Rachel House. The first is the majestic mountain itself, Taranaki Maunga, in all its moods. The other three are Aotearoa’s latest movie stars - and they’re only 12 years old. The Mountain is about three tamariki’s mission to find healing with the help of the mountain, discovering friendship in their adventures and many challenges along the way....

Mar 16, 2024•18 min

Fast Favourites: Black Grace choreographer Neil Ieremia gives movement to Pacific anger

Dance company Black Grace has just returned from a US tour where thousands of people watched their latest work, Paradise Rumour. The company performed in Portland, Laguna Beach and Chicago. Black Grace has become one of Aotearoa’s most internationally successful performance groups. The company have been touring in the US regularly since a sold-out season at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 2004, and have made it to Europe, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Australia, and New Caledonia. For founder, ar...

Mar 16, 2024•21 min

When art and film become entwined: painter Sandro Kopp

In 2018, Sandro Kopp was tasked by film director Wes Anderson with creating ten monumental paintings for the film The French Dispatch in less than three months. Kopp’s works needed to look like the work of a singular genius (the fictional “criminally insane” artist Moses Rosenthaler, played by Benicio Del Toro) who had created the work while imprisoned over three years. No pressure then! The Rosenthal Paintings is a project Kopp has described as the most challenging and satisfying project of his...

Mar 10, 2024•18 min

Regional Wrap: Timaru and what’s next for South Canterbury’s arts institutions

A well known arts critic, historian and commentator, Andrew Paul Wood in Timaru fills us in on ‘drama’ around the Timaru Theatre Royal redevelopment, which includes a new venue for South Canterbury Museum and some functions of the Aigantighe Art Gallery - one of the South Island’s most significant public galleries.

Mar 10, 2024•8 min

Reimagining a map from a Tongan perspective: Icao Tiseli

What would a map that represents a more distinct lived human cultural perspective look like? That has been the very personal question for Icao Tiseli with her award-winning project Mapping the Wheke. At the end of 2023, the Tongan-born Tāmaki Makaurau-based associate at architecture firm Jasmax was named one of six winners for the project at Archiprix International, a biennial competition that looks to showcase the new generation of the world's best architects and urbanists. She travelled to Rot...

Mar 10, 2024•20 min

Boy: a tragic and compelling story of gender identity

The true story behind theatre show Boy is both controversial and compelling. Appearing at the Auckland Arts Festival theatre and written by Dutch-born, Netherlands-based playwright Carly Wijs (Us/Them) is based on the life of twins, Bruce and Brian Reimer born in Canada in 1966.

Mar 09, 2024•14 min

Musicians who paint: The Bats’ Robert Scott plays Fast Favourites and remembers Hamish Kilgour

Ōtepoti Dunedin’s Robert Scott is best known as a member of seminal New Zealand bands The Bats and The Clean, but more quietly he’s been painting for decades with work appearing in both exhibitions and on album covers. These days he also co-runs Port Chalmers gallery Pea Sea Art. On Friday, an exhibition devoted to the art of Scott’s late Clean bandmate Hamish Kilgour, I Go Side On opened at Pūmanawa, The Arts Centre in Ōtautahi Christchurch.

Mar 09, 2024•12 min
← PrevNext →
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android