What’s on in Christchurch this weekend and beyond
Pride 2024
Christchurch Pride is here with myriad events for the LGBTQIA+ community and their allies to enjoy.
Events include a free family-friendly event at Riverside Market, showcasing local drag performers today at 6.30pm, Queered Scriptless at the Court Theatre at 10.15pm today, Takatāpui Pride Picnic at Riccarton Bush from 12pm tomorrow, and Pride Dog Walk with Rollickin Gelato at 5pm tp,prrpw.
Events are happening throughout Pride Week, which began on yesterday and ends March 31.
Visit chchpride.co.nz for the full calendar of events.
St Patricks Day
Celebrate St Patrick’s Day this Sunday at Paddy’s on Manchester St in Christchurch.
Breakfast is on from 8.30am to 11am, and there’ll be live music (including from local music stalwart Adam McGrath), Irish dancers, and plenty of Guinness available throughout the day. Next door at The Church, Johnny and the Fox will be on stage from 12pm, followed by Irish dancers at 3.30pm, The Norwesters at 4.30pm, and Mr.Speaker at 7pm.
St Patrick’s Day celebrations will also be held at many bars around Christchurch on Sunday (check out your favourite venue’s website or social media pages for details).
For the wider family, the Christchurch Irish Society is hosting a community event from 11am to 2pm at its premises on Domain Tce in Spreydon.
The event includes bouncy castles and outside toys, face painting and glitter tattoos, food, drinks and ice creams, and a lolly scramble.
Guests are welcome to bring their own picnic too. Tickets are available from Humanitix.
Kaiapoi Gypsy Fair
Check out a range of funky stalls, cool vehicles, and entertainment when the annual Gypsy Fair returns to Kaiapoi tomorrow and Sunday. It’s on at Ruataniwha Civic Centre on Williams St from 9am to 5pm both days. Entry is free.
Boulder Copper Sounds – family music event
Also in North Canterbury, is family music event Boulder Coppers Sounds in Clarkville on Sunday.
Expect a great line-up of local musicians to keep you entertained throughout the day. Bring a picnic lunch too and something to sit on.
It’s on from 11am to 2pm at Silverstream Reserve, 155 South Eyre Rd. Entry is free.
Arts inspiration over breakfast
All in for Arts is a free breakfast kōrero at the Christchurch Art Gallery. Five speakers will each spend five minutes talking about the importance of the creative arts in their lives. They are writer Ciaran Fox, sculptor Neil Dawson, city councillor Andrei Moore, NZ Symphony Orchestra chairperson Ainsley Walter and artist Tamara Sikuri.
The event next Tuesday at the art gallery is from 7.30am to 9am. It is free with coffee and croissants provided. Register for through online ticketing site Humanitix.
Water safety for whole whānau
Rolleston’s swim school instructors are providing fun, interactive water safety sessions for families this Sunday, from 1.30pm to 3pm and from 3.30pm to 5pm.
Learn how to fit life jackets, tows and huddles, boat safety and rescues.
There’s a minimum age of 5 years and sessions cost $25 per family of four, or $10 per adult and $5 per child.
Tickets for the sessions at the Selwyn Aquatic Centre are available from Humanitix.
Bargains galore at annual city book sale
Treat your bookshelves and grab a bargain at the annual Big Bargain Book Sale at Pioneer Recreation and Sport Centre on Lyttelton St, Christchurch.
The sale is happening from 9am to 7pm today and 9am to 4pm tomorrow.
There’ll be thousands of books for all ages and interests, with stock added throughout the sale. Fiction and non-fiction books are just $3, large print $3, young adult and children’s books $1, magazines 20 cents each (or 10 for $2), and audio-visual items like DVDs, CDs and talking books $3. Premium books – including those about art, landscape, gardening, and New Zealand – will have marked prices. Pay by eftpos or cash.
For information on transport and parking check out the Christchurch City Libraries website.
Canterbury Polyfest
Secondary school students from across the region will showcase and celebrate their Pasifika culture, language and identify through dance and music at Canterbury Polyfest tomorrow.
Canterbury Polyfest began in 2000 and is now the most recognised Pacific Festival in the South Island.
It’s on from 8.30am to 9pm at the special events area in Christchurch’s North Hagley Park.
There’ll also be 60 stallholders with food, arts and crafts, clothing and service providers.
Entry is by koha.
Triathlon, duathlon and trail run
The Brad Richards Building Sea2Sky Challenge is for all ages and abilities - from 5-year-olds to elite athletes - and entries can be made as teams or individuals.
Starting with a swim at Scaborough Beach early this Sunday, the triathlon, duathlon and trail running event also takes experienced participants up Evans Pass, along Summit Rd, and through the Godley Head and Taylors Mistake tracks.
Juniors and novice athletes will stick to the flat streets of Sumner, while kids aged 5 to 9 will have a short wade/run event.
The entry fee ranges from $25 to $99. Registrations can be made online at eventplus.net/SS23
Lunchtime music
Inspirational cellist Heleen du Plessis promises to bring drama, romance, and beauty to your lunchtime this week.
She’ll play alongside internationally acclaimed pianist Terence Dennis at this Monday’s Great Hall Lunchtime Music session at the Arts Centre in Christchurch.
Together, they’ll perform Sonata for Cello and Piano in G minor op. 19 and Vocalise by Rachmaninoff.
Tickets for the event, which starts at 1.10pm, are available from the Arts Centre website.
Repair Revolution
This monthly workshop brings together skilled and professional repair volunteers to help fix your stuff.
Get away from throwaway culture and instead support product stewardship through the art and practice of repair.
A variety of things can be brought along for repair, from torn or holey clothes to stuck zippers and shoes, furniture and lamps, ceramics and pottery, electronics and gadets, toys, and more.
Feel free to ask if you’re unsure if your item can be fixed, and if your broken thing needs specific parts to fix it, bring them along too. Payment is by koha.
This month’s workshop is happening on Tuesday at the Riverlution Eco Hub at 46A Vogel St in Richmond, Christchurch, from 5.30pm to 7.30pm.
Lose Control singer returns
Vocal powerhouse Teddy Swims has just announced a return to Australia and New Zealand this July – including a stop at the Christchurch Town Hall on July 4.
The singer from Atlanta, Georgia, has amassed 2.2 billion global streams globally and his current single, Lose Control, reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 (USA) and number three on the UK chart. Swims will perform with his band, Freak Freely, to captivate audiences with his soulful voice, traversing genres from soul to funk, and gospel to R&B.
“Now I’m watching people connect with the messages and stories and realising not only are the songs helping me, but they’re also helping them too,” Teddy says of his debut album, which followed four EP releases.
Tickets for the Christchurch show are available now from Ticketek.
Overlooking female entrepreneurs for capital investment is a $32 billion missed opportunity for economic growth, research shows.
Globally, about 2% of capital investment is going to women-led businesses.
In New Zealand, 6% of early-stage businesses that received investment capital from New Zealand Growth Capital Partners were women-owned.
While that does not encapsulate the entire venture capital industry in New Zealand, entrepreneur and Enterprise Angels board member Jenny Rudd says it is a snapshot of just how under-represented women are when it comes to receiving funding for their businesses.
“Entrepreneurialism isn’t a gender-specific skill set. It is gender-agnostic, so why is it then that we only invest in one type of person?” said Rudd, founder of B2B tech platform Dispute Buddy.
Low investment figures into femaleowned businesses in New Zealand were particularly alarming given that the country was considered a leader when it came to the number of female-owned and led businesses it produced, she said.
Last year Rudd and business veteran Theresa Gattung analysed six years’ worth of data from Young Enterprise and New Zealand Capital Partners, and found that women and men are no more entrepreneurial than each other – but the gender investment gap is huge.
For every 100 startups that New Zealand Capital Growth Partners invested in using taxpayer money, just 6.6% of those were owned by women. Rudd suspects that the data will have improved this year.
Rudd and Gattung have received funding from Xero, Craigs Investment Partners and Global Woman to carry out their research again this year, in collaboration with the University of Auckland, and to broaden their research to find out how many businesses the country is investing in that are owned by female-only, men-only or mixed genders, and take a look at where ethnicity comes into that.
The pair expect to gather data on more than 90% of the dollars invested in New Zealand.
They have nine venture capitalists (VC) signed up for this year’s research, including Icehouse Ventures, K1W1, WNT Ventures, Motion Capital and Blackbird.
Rudd said women were given not only less investment, but also less money than men were. It was a bitter pill to swallow given that, overall, more women were starting up businesses in this country than men were.
Other research has found that women and other under-represented founders return more revenue on every dollar invested than men-founded businesses do.
Rudd said she believed this was because women were “used to doing more with less”.
Less than 1c in every investment dollar went to women founders of colour in New Zealand, she said.
She believed it was possible to shift the dial to get equal capital investment distribution over the next three years. She said it was pleasing that the majority of the country’s VCs had come on board to share data, and were “motivated” to help remove bias from their investment committees.
“We are missing so much opportunity by not investing in women. Women bring a different lens to solve the biggest problems of our time,” Rudd said.
“We all don’t benefit from one side doing better than the other.”
She said it was deeply ingrained in the psyche of society that women were not as successful as men in business, a bias that was “simply not true”.
VCs that had more women on their investment committees and in general partner roles attracted more female founders and had higher investment rates into women-led businesses, she said.