Fungi Fest NZ
The inaugural Fungi Fest NZ takes place from 14th March to 14th April 2024. This will be a first-of-its-kind festival for New Zealand with more than 27 smaller events culminating with a large community festival day.
The point of this mycology-themed festival is to use creative practice to educate the community on fungi and mushrooms, their important role in our ecosystem, and how to respect them when out and about. Some events are in collaboration with Envirohub Bay of Plenty’s Sustainable Backyards program.
The festival takes place at the start of the main fungi season in New Zealand so that people can then go out fungi searching with their newfound knowledge.
These include mushroom growing workshops, author talks, information evenings, and creative workshops (including pottery, metalwork, woodwork, and sewing) as well as food events, film showings, fungi finding walks, art/photography displays and free community workshops.
A very special ‘Fungi Finding and Identification Basics’ walk takes place at Aongatete
on Friday 5th April at 10am, run by Botanist and ex biology/science teacher Shirley Kerr, who was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) for services to mycology in 2021. Shirley wrote A Field Guide to New Zealand Fungi, arguably the best NZ fungi field guide available. Shirley will also be giving a talk ‘Fungi Fetish - how fungi have taken over my life’ later that day at Tauranga City Library from 6pm. Shirley is an ex-resident of the Kaimais, who now resides in Blenheim.
We also have a beginners ‘Fungi Photography Basics’ walk led by Lee Ormsby Andricksen. Lee is an avid amateur fungi hunter and photographer and helps to run the Facebook group ‘Mushrooms of New Zealand (photography)’ which has over 19,000 members. This walk will cover fungi finding and entry-level fungi photography. This takes place at Puketoki Reserve from 11am on Saturday 6th April. All three of these events are free events, but each has limited spaces and bookings via the website are essential. More information and details are on the website: ecoscievents.org.nz/fungifestnz