CubaDupa

Last updated

CubaDupa
Free Agents Brass Band @ CubaDupa, March 25, 2018 (39204825960).jpg
Free Agents Brass Band @ CubaDupa, 25 March 2018
Genre Arts festival
Dates2018: 24–25 March (exact dates vary each year)
Location(s) Cuba Street, Wellington
Country New Zealand
Years active2015–present
Founded2015
Website www.cubadupa.co.nz

CubaDupa is New Zealand's largest outdoor arts and music festival, celebrating the unique character of Cuba Street, Wellington. CubaDupa describes itself as "a creative playground blurring the lines between audience & performer." [1] It attracts up to 100,000 people. [2] [3] The festival is managed and produced by the non-profit Creative Capital Arts Trust. It is held each year over a weekend (Saturday to Sunday) in late March. The festival features a dozen music stages, parade groups, street theatre performances, visual art installations, and food and beverage vendors. Some central city streets are closed with Cuba Street in the centre, creating a large pedestrian festival zone. Many artists participate in the CubaDupa programme, including acts from all over the world. [4] [5] In 2023, over 1,200 artists were signed up to perform, in 41 different venues around the city centre. [6]

Contents

History

CubaDupa is a revival of the Cuba Street Carnival, which was created and run by Martin Wilson through the 1980-90s. [7] [8] Two additional privately run carnivals were staged in 1991 [9] and 1993. [10] Chris Morley Hall re-launched the carnival from 1998–2009.

CubaDupa was founded in 2015, from a vision between the newly formed non-profit Creative Capital Arts Trust, and the Wellington City Council. [11] The CCAT is also the umbrella for the New Zealand Fringe Festival.

Team and partners

Drew James is the "founder and creative force" behind CubaDupa. [12] He began as Artistic Director from 2015–2019. [13] In 2020, Gerry Paul took the role of Festival Director, while James assumed the position of CCAT Chief Executive and remained as a creative consultant. [14] [15] In 2021, James is became Festival Director as well as being CCAT Chief Executive. Bianca Bailey, CubaDupa Festival Producer. Bianca Bailey joined the team in 2020 as CCAT Music and Festival Producer. [16]

Though ran by the CCAT, CubaDupa is financially powered in part by local partners. In 2023, these partners included the Arts Council of NZ Toi Aotearoa/Creative NZ, E Tū Whānau, Wellington City Council, Te Māngai Pāho, the Four Winds Foundation, The Lion Foundation, NZ Community Trust, and Pub Charity Limited. [17]

Most of the workers are at event itself are volunteer, in roles such as event support, zone supervisors, artist minders, greenroom attendants, and parade marshals. [18]

Festivals

Tiki Taane in concert at CubaDupa 2017 Tiki Taane in concert at CubaDupa 2017 (2).jpg
Tiki Taane in concert at CubaDupa 2017
Upper Cuba Street Upper Cuba Street during cuba dupa.jpg
Upper Cuba Street

Some of the events of the 2015 festival were 100 Brazilian samba drummers hosted by Wellington Batucada and The Grand Opening tours of the Opera House produced by Barbarian Productions as well as stages with bands. [19] The new brand for CubaDupa was a finalist in the 2015 Designers Institute of New Zealand, Best Design Awards in the Small Brand Identity category. [20]

In 2017, the CubaDupa festival was reported as having 250 events from Samba performances, opera, dance, steampunks, and virtual reality tours and 90 street food stalls. [21] [22]

The 2019 programme included Cha Wa from New Orleans, Alien Weaponry, and New Zealand dance company Touch Compass. [23] The programme and locations were changed to create a more security-focused event after the Christchurch Terror Attacks just prior on 15 March. [24]

The COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand forced the cancellation of the 2020 festival, with the decision made very close to the event. [25] There were 1500 artists and 450 performances lined up. A live streaming event occurred on Saturday 18 April. [26]

The festival was revived in 2021, after COVID-19 cases had fallen significantly and lockdown restrictions had been lifted. [27] It had over 120,000 attendees on the Saturday alone, surpassing the typical crowd of 100,000 across both days. [28] Reportedly, the Director-General of Health at the time, Ashley Bloomfield, who was heavily involved in the efforts against COVID-19, paid a visit to the event. [29]

In 2022, the festival was again cancelled, just six weeks before the event, due to a spike in COVID-19. [30] They had planned for a "portal-entering" theme, [31] which they postponed to re-use in 2023.

Policies

Though The Cuba Precinct is a liquor ban zone and CubaDupa is family friendly event, alcohol is available to buy and drink during the festival in designated licensed areas. [32]

The festival is committed to "providing an accessible and welcoming experience for festival-goers with specific requirements or additional needs." [33]

They are also progressing toward being a Zero Waste event, and in 2023 are implementing measures such as being plastic bag free, having dedicated waste and recycling bin stations, requiring compostable packaging from all participating street food stalls, supplying reusable cups to all drink vendors, and collaborating with Native Sparkling to donate toward planting native trees. [34]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wellington</span> Capital city of New Zealand

Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the third-largest city in New Zealand by metro area, and is the administrative centre of the Wellington Region. It is the world's southernmost capital of a sovereign state. Wellington features a temperate maritime climate, and is the world's windiest city by average wind speed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Petone</span> Suburb in Lower Hutt, New Zealand

Petone, a large suburb of Lower Hutt, Wellington, stands at the southern end of the Hutt Valley, on the northern shore of Wellington Harbour. The Māori name Pito-one means "end of the sand beach".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BATS Theatre</span> Theatre in Wellington, New Zealand

BATS Theatre is a theatre venue in Wellington, New Zealand. Initially founded as the Bats Theatre Company in 1976, then established in its current form in 1989. BATS Theatre has seen the development of many performing arts talents of New Zealand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Te Aro</span> Suburb in Wellington City, New Zealand

Te Aro is an inner-city suburb of Wellington, New Zealand. It comprises the southern part of the central business district including the majority of the city's entertainment district and covers the mostly flat area of city between The Terrace and Cambridge Terrace at the base of Mount Victoria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Zealand music festivals</span>

Music festivals have a long and chequered history in New Zealand. The first large outdoor rock music festivals were Redwood 70 in 1970 and the Great Ngaruawahia Music Festival in 1973. The largest was the 1979 Nambassa festival, one of several Nambassa festivals held around that time, in Golden Valley, just north of Waihi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cuba Street, Wellington</span> Street in Wellington, New Zealand

Cuba Street is a prominent city street in Wellington, New Zealand. Among the best known and most popular streets in the city, the Cuba precinct has been labelled Wellington's cultural centre, and is known for its high-per-capita arts scene the world over.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toi Pōneke Arts Centre</span> Creative production facility and support complex in New Zealand

The Toi PōnekeArts Centre, is the New Zealand capital's creative production facility and support complex. It was established between 2003 and 2005, and was formally opened by Mayor Kerry Prendergast in July 2005. For twelve years previous, the city's arts centre had been based at the much smaller Oriental Bay Rotunda. The new complex, spread across two buildings and seven floors, has a focus on active creative production in all disciplines, and on the further advancement of cultural identity in New Zealand. It is located in the bustling and dynamic Upper Cuba Street neighbourhood of Wellington.

The Cuba Street Carnival was a street parade and creative celebration in Cuba Street, Wellington, New Zealand that was intermittently held from the 1980s and saw crowds of 10,000 - 20,000 people. It stopped in 2009 due to a lack of funding, and was revived in 2015 under the name Cubadupa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Zealand Opera</span> Opera company in New Zealand (2000–)

New Zealand Opera is New Zealand's only full-time professional opera company, formed in 2000 from the merger of companies in Auckland and Wellington. New Zealand Opera is headquartered in Parnell, Auckland, stages several productions a year, runs educational programmes, and supports early-career opera singers with the Dame Malvina Major Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Auckland Arts Festival</span> Annual arts festival in New Zealand

Formerly known as Auckland Festival, Auckland Arts Festival or Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Makaurau is an annual arts and cultural festival held in Auckland, New Zealand. The Festival features works from New Zealand, the Pacific, Asia and beyond, including world premieres of new works and international performing arts events.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Hipkins</span> Prime Minister of New Zealand since 2023

Christopher John Hipkins is a New Zealand politician who has been serving as the 41st prime minister of New Zealand and leader of the New Zealand Labour Party since 2023. He has been the member of Parliament (MP) for Remutaka since the 2008 election.

The New Zealand Fringe Festival is an open access arts festival in Wellington, New Zealand held over several weeks in February and March each year. The 2020 programme marked the festival's 30th anniversary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Summer City (Wellington)</span>

Summer City was a summer entertainment programme staged throughout Wellington the capital city of New Zealand. It was run from January 1979 through to 1987 by the Wellington City Council’s Parks and Recreation Department and the Wellington Community arts Council utilising the Department of Labour’s Temporary Employment Programme, the Project Employment Programme and the Student Community Services Programme. After the Government's funding ceased the programme was continued by Council directly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Eagle</span> New Zealand politician

Tahere Paul Eagle is a New Zealand politician and member of the New Zealand House of Representatives for the Rongotai electorate. He was a Wellington City Councillor from 2010 to 2017 and was the first person of Māori descent to be Deputy Mayor of Wellington, but was defeated in a landslide when he sought the mayoralty as an independent candidate in 2022.

AotearoaNew Zealand Festival is a multi-arts biennial festival based in Wellington New Zealand that started in 1986. Previous names are the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, New Zealand International Arts Festival, New Zealand Arts Festival and New Zealand Festival of the Arts. The festival is produced every two years and runs across three weeks in venues in Wellington City and outreach programmes in the region. The festival features both international and national acts from performing arts and music with a literary programme also.

There have been several COVID-19 protests in New Zealand held since 2020, where people protested the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand, in particular the lockdown measures in place in March–May 2020, August 2020, and August–November 2021 and the later vaccine mandates. Most politicians both within and outside of Government and the vast majority of people have condemned these protests and view them as grandstanding by the organisers, and fear they may have spread the virus.

The following lists events that happened during 2021 in New Zealand.

Ariana Rahera Tikao is a New Zealand singer, musician and author. Her works explore her identity as a Kāi Tahu woman and her music often utilises taonga pūoro. Notably, she co-composed the first concerto for taonga pūoro in 2015. She has released three solo albums and collaborated with a number of other musicians. She was a recipient of an Arts Foundation Laureate Award in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voices for Freedom</span> Anti-vaccination group in New Zealand

Voices for Freedom (VFF) is an anti-vaccination advocacy group in New Zealand that formed in December 2020 to oppose the New Zealand Government's COVID-19 mitigation policies and vaccination rollout. The organisation is founded and led by food blogger and former Advance New Zealand candidate Claire Deeks, Libby Johnson and Alia Bland. Voices for Freedom has been criticised by NZ Skeptics, The Spinoff editor Madeleine Chapman, and "FACT Aotearoa" for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccinations.

MartinJames Wilson was an environmentalist and community leader Wellington, New Zealand. In the 1980s he initiated and ran several Cuba Street Carnivals, started the Birdman competitions on the Wellington waterfront and initiated festivals and craft markets though several suburbs over decades. He raised awareness of food waste via setting up and running guerrilla gardening composting in his local suburb of Aro Valley.

References

  1. ↑ "CubaDupa – CubaDupa" . Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  2. ↑ "CubaDupa". Wellington City Council. 22 April 2020. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  3. ↑ reporter, Wellington (9 December 2021). "CubaDupa confirms dates for 2022, reveals portal-entering theme". Stuff. Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  4. ↑ "About – Cuba Dupa". Cuba Dupa. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
  5. ↑ Granville, Alan (13 March 2019). "Wellington's CubaDupa: Five highlights for 2019". Stuff. Archived from the original on 22 April 2020. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  6. ↑ "Artists" . Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  7. ↑ "Loading... | Collections Online – Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa". collections.tepapa.govt.nz. Retrieved 26 May 2022.
  8. ↑ Collins, Simon (23 February 1995). "Street of integrity carnival bands". City Voice. p. 10.
  9. ↑ Roy, Don (5 December 1991). ""Jumbo's Buffet Salad Choice"". The Dominion. pp. front.
  10. ↑ "City Voice, 11th November 1993 p.2". Wellington City Libraries. Retrieved 20 November 2022.
  11. ↑ "CubaDupa". www.wellingtonairport.co.nz. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  12. ↑ "Team – CubaDupa" . Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  13. ↑ "Team – CubaDupa" . Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  14. ↑ Sharpe, Marty (13 February 2022). "Wellington's CubaDupa 'just not possible' this year say organisers". Stuff. Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  15. ↑ Wiltshire, Laura (28 March 2021). "Thousands of people flood Wellington's city centre for return of CubaDupa". Stuff. Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  16. ↑ "Team – CubaDupa" . Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  17. ↑ "Partners – CubaDupa" . Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  18. ↑ "Volunteer – CubaDupa" . Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  19. ↑ "Cuba Duba 2015 in Wellington". The Sound. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  20. ↑ "CubaDupa – Street Festival | Best Awards". bestawards.co.nz. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  21. ↑ Swinnen, Lucy (20 March 2017). "CubaDupa boasts 250 events, 90 street food stalls and 1 virtual reality experience". Stuff. Archived from the original on 27 August 2017. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  22. ↑ "CubaDupa Street Festival – Let's Beat the Street 25 & 26 March!". The Big Idea. 6 March 2017. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  23. ↑ "Wellington.scoop.co.nz » International line-up announced for CubaDupa – seven stages and all free" . Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  24. ↑ Granville, Alan (31 March 2019). "CubaDupa still parties hard despite security changes". Stuff. Archived from the original on 1 April 2019. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  25. ↑ Hunt, Tom (15 March 2020). "Coronavirus: Arts Festival canned. Next up Homegown and CubaDupa". Stuff. Archived from the original on 16 March 2020. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  26. ↑ "CubaDupa presents Go Home Stay Home". 15 April 2020. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  27. ↑ "COVID-19: Current cases". Ministry of Health NZ. Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  28. ↑ Wiltshire, Laura (28 March 2021). "Thousands of people flood Wellington's city centre for return of CubaDupa". Stuff. Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  29. ↑ Wiltshire, Laura (28 March 2021). "Thousands of people flood Wellington's city centre for return of CubaDupa". Stuff. Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  30. ↑ Sharpe, Marty (13 February 2022). "Wellington's CubaDupa 'just not possible' this year say organisers". Stuff. Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  31. ↑ reporter, Wellington (9 December 2021). "CubaDupa confirms dates for 2022, reveals portal-entering theme". Stuff. Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  32. ↑ "FAQ – CubaDupa" . Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  33. ↑ "Accessibility – CubaDupa" . Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  34. ↑ "Sustainability – CubaDupa" . Retrieved 20 March 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.