MEDIA RELEASE

9 February 2012

One-day event aims to lay groundwork for Dunedin as an ‘arts city’

Could Dunedin be New Zealand’s answer to Barcelona? Can the arts be at the centre of the city’s economic life? How does Dunedin become an ‘ideas factory’?

These and other big questions will be debated at a free one-day symposium designed to help form the basis of the city’s new Arts Strategy.

Organised by the Arts and Culture Working Group, Transforming Dunedin: Kia Whakaumu Otepoti - will include speakers from around New Zealand as well as a series of workshops. All Dunedin people with an interest in the city’s arts, culture and creative sectors are welcome to attend.

Working group spokesman Alan Baddock said the Dunedin City Council had recognised the city’s creative potential - but it was now crucial to put some substance behind the idea of an ’arts capital’.

“Dunedin urgently needs an arts strategy. That’s exactly what we want to help create with this symposium - a roadmap to establish a truly great ‘arts city’.

“For too long Dunedin’s potential as a leading creative hub has been overlooked - it can be a thriving arts capital in the South Island, and an ideas factory where innovative thinking is celebrated and exported worldwide,” Mr Baddock said.

“One thing that sets Dunedin apart is its strong arts and cultural life and the many talented people that live and work here.”

Transforming Dunedin speakers include:

• Naomi McCleary - former arts adviser at Waitakere City Council, which incorporated the creative sector into all levels of planning and development
• Arts Voice Christchurch - a group developing successful initiatives to put arts at the centre of the rebuilding process
• Bridie Lonie - Dunedin Art School lecturer will give an overview of cities that used art and culture to rebrand and reinvigorate their city

WHAT: Transforming Dunedin: Creative Arts and Culture Symposium
WHEN: Saturday 3 March, 2012, 10am - 4pm
WHERE: Dunedin School of Art, Otago Polytechnic, Riego Street, North Dunedin
REGISTER: www.transformingdunedin.co.nz

LAUNCH: Friday 2 March 6pm, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 30 The Octagon

ENDS

Notes to editors:
The Dunedin City Council’s Spatial Plan contains the vision of Dunedin as an arts capital and ideas centre. The Arts and Culture Working Group was established as part of the Your City Our Future process to help advance that vision.

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