Waru Pacific Arts Festival

This years line-up of awesome Pasifika and Maori artists include Jeanine Clarkin and local fashion icon Ron Te Kawa, Emma Kesha, Loretta Young, Tribalincs, DRUM 5, Areta Wilkinson, Te Hae Whanau, Mark Vanilau, Ebony Fields, Stanmore, Restoration, Swarm, 'Natural Buzz', Niu Seila and much much more.

Waru-Pacific Arts is the 8th annual Pacific Arts Festival of Christchurch. Since 2001 with the first festival called ' Tasi – Pacific Arts' (one day celebrating Pasifika and Maori arts) this celebration has seen many of New Zealands top artists display, perform, create, demonstrate and share. For Pacific Underground this has assisted and development all of its members through performance, production, event management, community capacity building and networking.

Happy New Year!!

Well, another year rolls around and here we are, planning to start 2008 with a bang!

Our plans for the immediate future are to develop some ICT training programmes for our Pacific communities here in Christchurch, so we can invite people to come and take part in utilising the resources that we have here at the eCentre.

Worth mentioning is the fact that we have had a change of officers, effective from our last meeting in December 2007. Congratulations to Toe Smith, who is the new Chairperson of Canterbury Pasifika Ltd. Memea Ma'aelopa and Vaemu Fidow remain as the Treasurer and Secretary of the company respectively.

Podcasting & Gaming at Pasifika eCentre

Had a great workshop on Wednesday at the Pasifika eCentre here in Christchurch - 4 of the current Ministry of Education eFellows - came to the eCentre and presented their research around the effects of using different 'hooks' and technology in education. Dorothy Burt and Jane Nicholls presented their research based around Podcasting, which even included some hands-on work where participants could create their own audio file. Gavin Hewitt and Jonathan Parsons demonstrated some of the simulations and gaming environments that they had developed - lots of it was about virtual environments and how students interact in those environments.

It was a great morning workshop spent listening to the presenters talk about real-life examples in the classroom. The session ended with a feedback session looking at the ICT needs of participants in their own communities and how the eCentre can help meet those needs. Overall the workshop looks to be a success, and we look forward to providing more of these types of workshops in the future.

Pasifika eCentre opens in Christchurch!!

Yes, we've finally gotten around to starting up our own blog so that everyone on their computers, whether you're at home or work, can keep up-to-date with whats happening with Canterbury Pasifika Ltd!

So far, its been a pretty hectic month - moving into our new premises - 202 Hereford Street, Christchurch. We've even had an opening ceremony to kick things off, with attendees from the local community coming this morning to check out where we are and the projects that we're up to. We also had the opportunity to host the Honourable Leumanuvao Winnie Laban, who helped to launch and promote our centre. I must admit, that it was very encouraging to hear the minister appreciating the work we are doing. Here's a wee photo of what went on...

Now onto the next task of setting up the programmes for our eCentre and finalising the people to help run the programmes...

Check back to see how we're getting on!