Is Homegrown music festival coming to Christchurch?
Tuesday, 21 January 2025
Hagley Park, Wolfbrook Arena, QEII Park, the soon to be finished One New Zealand Stadium at Te Kaha.
Homegrown organisers, take your pick of Christchurch’s venues.
Wellington’s loss - the flagship Kiwi artist music festival leaving the Wellington waterfront after 18 years - could be Christchurch’s gain when the event moves to a new city in 2026.
Spread over two days and five stages and drawing 25,000 people, Homegrown has hit its quota in the capital and now needs more space to grow, managing director Andrew Tuck said.
He remained tight-lipped if Christchurch was a frontrunner, instead saying three or four locations were being seriously looked at, after venues across the whole country were initially considered.
Keen South Island attendees like Candace Demi of Christchurch, who has been to the “incredible” festival twice, have their fingers crossed the event will head south.
“The South Island quite often misses out on these sorts of events and South Islanders deserve to get a break from forking out piles of money to fly north to attend these events,” she said.
“Hagley Park is a great venue that suits the way that Homegrown is laid out in terms of moving from stage to stage and hosting multiple areas.”
Venues Ōtautahi chief executive Caroline Harvie-Teare believed that with the “quality and variety of venues across the city”, the event could be successfully held in Christchurch.
“Homegrown is a quality music festival with a successful track record in Wellington.”
Venues Ōtautahi was always looking for opportunities to attract new events, which was “a very competitive process”, she said, and any discussions taking place were commercially sensitive.
Christchurch City councillors Jake McLellan (central ward) and Andrei Moore (arts and creative industries portfolio) were both interested in seeing the Christchurch events calendar grow stronger.
Moore was “gutted” to hear Homegrown - one of his “favourite festivals”, which he had attended since he was 17 - was moving. Its new location would have to be “fairly spectacular” to motivate ticket sales because the Wellington waterfront setting was “pretty special”, he said.
“Between the stadium and Hagley Park with a beautiful river setting and various venues in between, we are well positioned to host just about anything.
“Even if Homegrown isn't coming to Christchurch, we have every opportunity to build on what existing festivals we do have … our own mini Christchurch Homegrown (Go Live!) could be grown into something very big.
“Local musicians can't live off a couple of well paid gigs a year or without venues to play in … so I'm very keen for this city to host more festivals that actively support local artists and venues.”
The success of New Zealand’s largest one-day music festival Electric Avenue (which is expanding to two days this year) bringing 30,000 people to Hagley Park demonstrated that Ōtautahi was “an excellent playground for music events”, ChristchurchNZ head of major events Karena Finnie said.
The city “already has a balanced offering of a range of festivals” and should Homegrown approach, it would “evaluate the opportunity to see if it would be a good fit for the city’s portfolio of major events”, she added.
Only Hagley Park or the new stadium would fit 25,000 music fans, she said.
Tuck was not picky when asked what he was looking for in a new venue.
“The biggest thing is just space.”
Being able to “bring that waterfront to life has been absolutely amazing” in Wellington and Tuck wanted to keep growing the event to give Kiwi artists a platform to get “bigger and greater”.
“When we first started, people said to us that Homegrown would only have a two year lifespan because there wasn't enough talent in New Zealand.
“We've shown 18 years on, that the talent that's come through gets deeper and deeper.”