Te Ara Ātea cultural centre to open in Rolleston after years of planning
Tuesday, 30 November 2021
It has been years in the making, but Rolleston’s new cultural facility Te Ara Ātea is about to open.
Te Ara Ātea combines a library, community spaces, museum, gallery, and a sensory garden, built at a cost of $22.2 million.
It will open on Thursday, 12 years after a cultural centre was proposed, and seven years after it was written into the district plan as part of a proposed new town centre.
The new facility is on Tennyson St and has a floorspace of 2000 square metres. It will be eventually be joined by a new shopping and hospitality centre to be built alongside.
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Selwyn deputy mayor Malcolm Lyall said since the district council had decided to build the new facility, the concept had evolved in line with international trends.
“Because it’s taken some time to come to fruition, we’ve changed with it. This is a modern learning environment – it’s not a ‘shush’ library.”
Lyall said the spread-out nature of the fast-growing Selwyn district made it important to have central facilities.
“We are 23 communities in Selwyn, we have a huge geographical area and a lot of little townships. This is the new manawa, the heart of the community.”
The two-storey building uses technology to display treasures on loan from Canterbury Museum and private owners, and has a large video wall showing footage taken around the region.
One taonga exhibited is a pounamu pendant, unearthed near Te Waihora/Lake Ellesmere and believed to have been carved between 1500 and 1800.
Featured artworks include Milky Way by Hannah Berry, a large piece made of dyed velvet studded with between 5000 and 10,000 glass crystals.
Also in the building are meeting and gathering rooms, a performing arts space, a craft and creative room, and a workshop with tools and machinery.
Outside, a sensory space is designed to engage the senses with plants and children’s artworks, fruit trees and vegetable patches, outdoor musical instruments, seating and water features. It is designed to cater for able-bodied people and those with disabilities and neurological conditions.
Covid-related delays mean the sensory space is still several weeks from completion.
Events already scheduled for Te Ara Ātea range from coding clinics and a stencil workshop to demonstrations of home brewing and tree pruning.
Nicki Moen, the council’s arts, culture and learning manager, said they wanted the building to have prominence in the community, which people could “treat at their own”.
“I’ve dreamed about this for quite a long time, because after the earthquakes … Selwyn had lots of new people coming out to the district, and it was a place where people could so easily feel lonely and disconnected.”
Moen said that in curating the collection, they had “tried really strongly” to cover the whole community.