Barbarians Revitalise Local Bowling Club with Mini-Art Festival

Wellington theatre company Barbarian Productions has a new home at the Vogelmorn Bowling Club in Brooklyn. They’re transforming the building into a mixed-use community space with a strong arts focus. To celebrate they are hosting the Spring Uprising, a 9-day mini-festival of parties, conversations, works-in-progress and workshops focused on socially engaged and community participatory arts.

Barbarian’s Artistic Director is the award winning theatre-maker, author and playwright Jo Randerson. She and her husband and business partner Thomas LaHood saw that their local bowling club was winding down its activities and saw great potential in the building, both to fill a gap for performing arts rehearsal space and as a place for the community to come together in an active way. Together with a group of dedicated locals they established a Trust to negotiate the purchase of the property.

The building now boasts several spaces hirable for rehearsals, workshops or events as well as a co-working office space shared by a growing number of tenants, with plans for a commercial kitchen and tool library in the pipeline.

From the 5th of September, the Vogelmorn Bowling Club will come alive with activity, from whanau-friendly parties, barbecues, freestyle dance sessions and all-ages percussion workshops to live performance, clown workshops and academic discussions.

Participants include international artists Kate McIntosh (Belgium) and Stephen Mushin (Melbourne), Martin Rodgers the director of the New Zealand Flag consultation initiative and a raft of diverse organisations including Arts Access, One Percent Collective, Community Music Junction, Akina Foundation, Voice Arts Trust, Urban Dream Brokerage and Creative New Zealand.

Spring Uprising is supported in part by funding from the Wellington City Council.

ENDS

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