Council to find spaces for artists to help put the creative back into the capital

Saturday, 21 June 2025

Wellington city councillor Teri O’Neil with artists Danny Webster (with guitar), and Hugo Robinson. They are getting the council to pen up spaces, or make it easier for small artist groups to perform gigs or exhibit work in some of Wellingtons empty buildings.

Oh how things have changed. Back in 2001, Laurie Foon was a fashion designer who created a now-famous “Bypass my ass” protest t-shirt as the Wellington City Council and the transport agency of the time planned to replace artists’ studios with a highway.

Musician serenades council as he seeks support for Wellington artists

Now, 24 years later, Foon is the city’s deputy mayor and pushed back her chair in a council meeting on Thursday to video a young artist performing a submission to the council aiming to get artists and the council working together. The “woohoo” in the video was her.

The upshot, led by councillor Teri O’Neill, sprung from a council committee this week and will mean the council actively working with artists to find space to create.

In fairness, it is not the first time. Not long after the central city bypass, or Karo Drive, ripped out some of the studios that Wellington had hung its “creative capital” banner from, the council opened Toi Poneke as an artists’ space ‒ which flourished despite initial scepticism of bureaucrats helping the arts. But its lease is about to expire and it is moving.

Deputy mayor Laurie Foon: ‘If we are the creative capital, we need to be creative in the way we think about achieving that.’

O’Neill said this week’s changes ‒ passed in the social, cultural and economic committee she chairs ‒ were a collaboration of the council, a musicians’ union, venue owners and artists.

It will see the council working to find public and privately owned underutilised spaces for artists to use. Staff would be asked to look at finding ways for artists to get affordable use of council-controlled venues, such as St James Theatre.

The council will also compile a guide to help emerging producers navigate permits, venues and council processes.

“Every unused shop front could be a gallery,” O’Neill said. “Every vacant floor, a rehearsal room. All it takes is a cool landlord to back it with imagination.”

Getting this over the line will be one of O’Neill’s last acts on council after being elected more than five years ago as a crop of young new councillors. She previously confirmed she was not running in the 2025 election and on Friday said this would be her legacy.

“I couldn’t be prouder,” she said.

“It’s the creative community that got it over the line. We started this fight in the middle of Covid, when venues were closing and artists were hanging by a thread.”

Danny Webster, who performed for the council on Thursday, said he moved from Christchurch to Wellington in 2017 due to the reputation the city had for live venues. But by the time he got here, much ‒ the likes of Bodega, Mighty Mighty and Sandwiches ‒ had or were being been “decimated”, he said.

Changes were still needed but Thursday’s council vote was “100%” a move in the right direction, he said.

It was then-mayor Kerry Prendergast’s support for the bypass that inspired Foon to join council. She on Friday welcomed the new changes ‒ and hoped to get more through in the district plan noise control rules to help musicians and performance artists.

“We just need space to let our live performance community show off their mahi,” she said.

“If we are the creative capital, we need to be creative in the way we think about achieving that.”