From the Station

Radical Possibilities of the Mind, Body and Senses: A Poetry Showcase​

The International Day of Persons with Disabilities is held December 3. To mark the Day, Wellington Access Radio broadcasts Radical Possibilities of the Mind, Body and Senses: A Poetry Showcase which appeared as part of the 2022 Verb Festival

Join these talented artists as they explore the powerful possibilities of poetry. From page to stage, Crip the Lit serves you sensational stanzas to delight the mind, body and senses. Featuring: Cadence Chung, Bee Trudgeon, Creatif Kate, Henrietta Bollinger, Maisie Chilton Tressler, Maytal Noy, Stella Carruthers and Trish Harris. This reading was curated by Helen Vivienne Fletcher for Crip the Lit.

Wellington Access Radio is grateful to everyone involved for the opportunity to broadcast this event for the first time on the 2022 International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
Wellyfest 2019
Wellington Folk Festival, or Wellyfest, attracted a top line up of international and New Zealand acts for this year’s event. The Festival run over Labour Weekend, from Friday 25 to Monday the 28 October, at its regular venue, the Brookfield Outdoor Education Centre in Moore’s Valley, near Wainuiomata.

It was the 55th Wellyfest, making it the longest running folk festival in the country.
The performers this year included the exciting Kiwi-Australian duo, Vigenser and Martin; English balladeer Richard Grainger; Across the Great Divide, a Wellington group with a fascinating fusion of Celtic, Americana and Scandinavian music; and the highly entertaining and hard to define Chaps, from Dunedin. Two Australian acts, The Good Girl Song Project and The Bearded Cat, performed alongside award winning alt country singer and songwriter, Jennie Mitchell, and rising young New Zealand poet, Jessie Fenton.

All the info is on the festival website.
Hear We Are, Read Us


Crip the Lit was formed in 2016 by Trish Harris and Robyn Hunt as a way for Deaf and disabled writers to have their unique voices, perspectives and stories included and valued in mainstream writing in Aotearoa. We want to tell our stories our way. Crip the Lit is here to challenge stereotyped and inaccurate portrayals of disabled characters in books, movies and on television.


Their latest achievement is the publication of Here we are, read us: Women, disability and writing, a book that creatively explores the sometimes complicated and often neglected relationship between writing and disability. 

This little book with big ideas features eight diverse, well-known and emerging women writers. They are: Tusiata Avia, Steff Green, Helen Vivienne Fletcher, Charlotte Simmonds, Michele Leggott, Trish Harris, Te Awhina Arahanga and Robin Hyde (the only non-living writer). They are novelists, poets, essayists, playwrights, memoirists and bloggers. The important thing they have in common is that they all share the lived experience of disability.


For more info, and to access the book, head to the website.
The Performance Arcade
The Performance Arcade is New Zealand's leading experimental performance art festival.
Every year on Wellington Waterfront, a line of shipping containers provides a venue for a selection of performance installations and a programme of events, from live music through to live art. Widely recognized as a unique platform for performance artists, The Performance Arcade features artists from around New Zealand and the globe. And...it’s FREE. This year the new addition of Taste Arcade has involved the partnership of various businesses along the waterfront who will be serving up their own culinary performances throughout the festival.
The Performance Arcade 2019, February 22 - 24 from 10am - 11pm, February 28 - March 3 from 10am - 11pm.

Wellington Access Radio has partnered with The Performance Arcade, we bring you a selection of panel discussions (the Live ARTicle series) and live music performances (Live Music Series). Check out the podcasts below, and head to the website for more info.
Crip the Lit: The Great Debate
Diversity in writing is a hot topic. Laugh and learn as Crip the Lit gathers disability and literary luminaries to debate: There’s no such thing as a disabled writer. We are all just writers.
Adjudicator Matthew Jansen, debaters: Mandy Hager, Paula Tesoriero, Trish Harris, Steff Green, Henrietta Bollinger, Alisha Tyson. Saturday, November 10, 2018. 7:15-8:00pm. Wellington Access Radio recorded the session in partnership with Crip the Lit.

Crip the Lit is part of LitCrawl Wellington.
LitCrawl is an explosion of writers + ideas in the heart of Wellington city. Writers. Wellington's best-loved venues. You, your friends, strangers, live performance. LitCrawl is a fast-talking, street-loving celebration of New Zealand's top writers, publishers, performers, editors, musicians, lyricists, artists, comedians… and the people who want to hear them speak. The famous Crawl itself is on Saturday 10 November 6pm - 9pm (and a bit later). It's close, it's fast, and it's fun. Then we have LitCrawl Extended which is a whole other programme of events. There is so much to inspire you, provoke you, woke you!
New Zealand Chinese Language Week
23 - 29 September
Wellington Access Radio is broadcasting a special programme to celebrate New Zealand Chinese Language Week 2018!
 
In June 2018 for Multicultural Children's Day and the Chinese Culture Week at Te Papa in Wellington, Yafeng Group organised 12 children to perform a dance for the famous Tang poem “O Goose.” This performance included the exhibition of a Chinese goose painting, and the recitation of 7 Tang dynasty poems.
 
In this special broadcast, Susan Zou invites teacher Meifang Zhang to talk about how to plan and train children’s dance and poem performances. We also invited 6 of the 12 children who performed to talk about how they study Chinese and learn Tang dynasty poetry; they will also recite some Tang dynasty poems.
WHAT WE HAVE TO SAY (is worth sharing with you) - Renegade Radio
What we have to say (is worth sharing with you) is a pop-up renegade radio station running as part of Asian Aotearoa Arts Hui - hosted by AAAH2018 and Wellington Access Radio at Toi Poneke Arts Centre and featuring the amazing Lynda Chanwai-Earle.

In the first session from August 8th, Lynda interviews: Linda Lim from Dance Aotearoa New Zealand, Asian Events Trust & Chinese New Year Festival; Lisa Yung from Stories of Chinese New Zealanders; Ati Tuhoe, Senior Kaupapa Maori Advisor at CoCA Massey; David Donghyun (aka Booda), Fists of Fury Korean Hip Hop Producer; Dr. Luo Hui, from the Confucius Institute at Victoria University of Wellington; Dilohana Lekamge, a Wellington-based visual artist, and facilitator at MEANWHILE gallery; Matilda Boese-Wong, filmmaker; and Brannavan Gnanalingam, author.

The second session from September 15th features Lynda interviewing: Mark Amery, Romesh Dissanayak, and Pip Adam. Stan Chan, Yueyun Song, and Brigid Connor. Nigel Murphy and Sam Buchannan. Rose Lau, Sharon Lam, Kirsten Wong, and Alison Wong.

Thanks to Asian Arts Aotearoa Hui 2018! Check out the website for more events.
New Zealand Chinese Language Week 2017
16-22 October
The first New Zealand Chinese Language Week was held in 2015, this year is the third year it has been held. New Zealand is the first English speaking country to hold Chinese Language Week.
Wellington Access Radio aired a special programme to celebrate it.

Programme host: Susan ZOU
Programme invitees: Meifang ZHANG, Zhongjie XU, Qianxiang LIU, Changwu LIU

惠灵顿Access广播电台Wellington Access Radio
 
新西兰中文周节目

播出时间：2017年10月18日下午4:00 – 5:00
 
节目主持：   苏珊
节目参加者：张梅芳、许中杰、刘谦祥、刘长午
 
新西兰中文周2015年首次举行，今年是第三届。在西方国家中，新西兰是第一个举行中文周的国家。
 
今年的新西兰中文周举行时间从10月16日到10月22日，为此，惠灵顿Access广播电台特别推出新西兰中文周相关节目。
Mental Health Awareness Week
9-15 October 2017
Mental Health Awareness Week 2017 was held from the 9-15 October.
The Mental Health Foundation runs Mental Health Awareness Week every year. MHAW is always held during the week of World Mental Health Day (10 October). MHAW is endorsed by the World Federation for Mental Health and marked in over 150 countries at different times of the year. The Mental Health Foundation has organised MHAW in New Zealand since 1993.

To celebrate this week a member of Wellington Access Radio, Maryjane, interviewed Jo Copeland from Simpson Grierson.
Kava Club

Kava Club is an inclusive art collective who bring together emerging to established Māori and Pasifika art practitioners and advocates - anyone can join.
Te Wiki o te reo Māori
11-17 Mahuru 2017
To celebrate Māori Language Week 2017, we had some kōrero and waiata from kaiako from Te Wānaga o Aotearoa.
Common Ground - Hutt Public Art Festival
25 February - 4 March 2017
We share the waterways that run beneath our feet: water is vital to our sense of common ground.

A free public art festival situated in the Hutt Valley, Wellington Saturday 25 February – Saturday 4 March 2017, Common Ground explores our relationship with water – the Hutt River Te Awakairangi, its streams, springs and the aquifer beneath – and its importance to our sense of place, health and well-being.
Audio coming soon...
Photival
18 February - 4 March 2017
Wellington's first photography festival in over a decade, which aims to use photography as social commentary to discuss widely important issues we face in the world today. Photival is a photography festival for positive change. Its aim is to show people thought provoking photographic work from all over the world and then give them the tools they need to help.

This years theme was Brink. "Our world is on the brink in many respects. Will we save or destroy our environment? Will we create technology that vastly improves our lives or that will stop us from living them? Will we alter the current political systems to make a better world? Will we consider cultures, species, languages important enough to save?"

Wellington Access Radio partnered with Photival. As part of this we interviewed the open call winners, Ben Laksana, Antony Kitchener, and Christina Little.
The open call winners. From left to right: Ben Laksana - Inequality of Public Health Care in Indonesia, Christina Little -  Wellington Trolley Buses, Antony Kitchener - Plastic Waste in our Water.
Panel Discussion: Addressing Sexual Abuse in the New Zealand Music Community

On Friday, 6 May 2016, Wellington Access Radio aired a panel discussion between musicians and experts about how to address the issue of rape and sexual abuse in the music industry/community.

The musicians were Bevan Smith and Alistair Deverick.

The experts were: Eleanor Butterworth, Wellington Rape Crisis; Sherilee Kahui, Sexual Abuse Help Foundation; and Karin McCracken, Sexual Abuse Prevention Network.
Porirua People's Library
23-29 November 2015
TEZA - the Transitional Economic Zone of Aotearoa, took place between Saturday 21 and Sunday 29 November 2015. This was nine days of using public space for creation, discussion, and celebration, exploring different forms of working together, exchange, and well-being. The focus was on bringing different communities together in a common space, to create a very different kind of festival, or economic zone.

"We wish to collaborate with people in Porirua especially young people and settler-migrant communities and welcome diverse voices not immediately visible or typically heard. We wish to support local storytellers from diverse backgrounds by hosting a series of community-based, ‘slow-media’ workshops and story-generating activities."

From these artists sharing their know-how in art, design, writing, drawing, photography, film, and audio recordings, these stories took form and shape. This became the Porirua People’s Library, a unique text, image, and sound archive, made by the people and for the people of Porirua and the world.

Wellington Access Radio hosted the Porirua People's Radio. Every day we turn on the radio and hear stories of people in faraway places doing abstract things. But how often do you hear stories from your own city, told by the people in it? How did your neighbour come to live in Porirua? What inspires the person you walk past each day on the way to work?
 
Porirua People's Radio is your pop-up, live community station and we want you to share your voice with us!
 
Tell us the underground tales of Porirua in all of the diverse languages that make up your city. 

The recordings have formed part of the TEZA exhibition, and the archive serves as a snapshot of Porirua in 2015, its rich history and hopes for the future. Everyone has a story to tell, so come and join us.

Check out the Porirua People's Library and TEZA websites for more of the amazing text and image archive.
PPL#006 - TEZA + PPL + Pātaka Roundtable Discussion
PPL#007 - Art and the Cultural Architecture of Porirua with Ali Jansen
PPL#008 - 'On the Relative Merits of Porirua over the Hutt' - Mr Shay Green
PPL#009 - The Mighty Mika Perez: From Boy of the Waves to King of the Airwaves
PPL#010 - Shampoos, Cuts, and Mall Life with Valencia Skipper
PPL#011 - A Day in the Life of Jeremy Suave
PPL#012 - Campbell: "One of Porirua's Finest Characters"
PPL#013 - Pacific Families of Porirua - Stronger Together with Seanoa & Teri-Moana
PPL#014 - The Terrifying Sounds of Cows Breathing & Other Stories from the Life of Lorna

2017 Seasonal Celebration and End of Year Party

In December 2017, Wellington Access Radio programme makers, members, volunteers, friends, and staff took part in a seasonal celebration at Wellington Museum.

Wellington Access Radio's 35th Birthday Party

On 27 April 2016, Wellington Access Radio celebrated its 35th birthday with an event at Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision. The event also celebrated the Wellington Access Radio's historical audio collection at Ngā Taonga.