Auckland Scene

Out and about in Auckland

Things to do

Light Up Onehunga

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A brightly illuminated art display headed to South Auckland will see Onehunga come alive after dark this month, with floodlights and LED displays lighting up two of the suburb’s historic buildings.

Beginning on Matariki and running across six weekends, all-ages event Light Up Onehunga will see rainbows, underwater hues and moving lights projected onto St Peter’s Church and the M.Bray & Sons Building, as well as the surrounding trees.

Run by the Onehunga Business Association, the free, family-friendly event will feature eight projections and installations, running along Onehunga Mall from Princes Street to Church Street. Local store owners can also join in on the action — they’re being encouraged to decorate their shop fronts with fun (and illuminated) window displays.

The light show will run every Friday – Sunday from 6pm–10pm, beginning on Friday, June 24 and running until Sunday, July 31. Wrap up warm, grab some dinner from one of the surrounding eateries, and head south to check it out.

The post Light Up Onehunga appeared first on Concrete Playground.

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GABS Is Bringing Its 2022 Craft Beer, Cider and Food Festival Back to Auckland This June

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If you’re the kind of beer lover who feels like they’ve tried every brew ever — or you’ve made it your mission to achieve that yeasty goal — then you’re probably a big fan of the Great Australasian Beer Spectapular.

In 2022, the beer fest is finally returning to Auckland for the first time in two years. Prepare to knock back beers inspired by breakfast foods, savoury snacks, desserts, cocktails and more at Epsom Showgrounds on June 25.

Many Kiwi craft beers have made their humble beginnings at the Australian GABS, including Yeastie Boys’ Gunnamatta earl-grey infused IPA, and Garage Project’s Double Day Of The Dead, a spicy dark lager infused with chipotle, cacao nibs, vanilla and agave. Several fresh faces have signed on to participate at this year’s event, so you might be one of the first in the country to taste this year’s next big brew.

The event surveys both Australian and New Zealand breweries, with more than 40 set to be pouring their wares. Local breweries on the lineup this year include Bootleg Brewery, Deep Creek Brewing Company, Fortune Favours, Scoundrels and Rogues, Morningcider and Little Creatures.

Also on the bill: other types of tipples, including non-alcoholic beers, seltzers, gin and wines.

This year the festival will be held over two five-hour sessions, which gives you plenty of time to sip or chug, depending on preference. Session one will be held from 11.30am-4.30pm, while session two is more of a late night affair, running from 6.30-11.30pm.

GABS takes place at Auckland’s Epsom Showgrounds on June 25 — head to the event’s website for tickets and further details.

The post GABS Is Bringing Its 2022 Craft Beer, Cider and Food Festival Back to Auckland This June appeared first on Concrete Playground.

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Queen's Birthday High Tea at the Park Hyatt

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You might not be in the thick of the UK’s jubilee celebrations, but here in Auckland you can mark 70 since the Coronation in a right Royal fashion, with the Park Hyatt‘s special Queen’s Birthday and Jubilee high tea.

The hotel’s pastry chef Callum Liddicoat has created a five-course feast inspired by his own time in London, with a mix of sweet and savoury morsels.

Of course, classic club sandwiches are on the lineup, including a ham hock and green pea on sour dough and cucumber, as well as an English crumpet topped with salmon, roe and crème fraiche.

For the sweet tooths, you’ll want to save room for a strawberry and cream roulade, a seven-layer opera cake glazed with chocolate and candied hazelnuts, and a petit tart filled with salted caramel and banana compote.

And of course, there will be scones, served with a house made strawberry champagne jam, whipped mascarpone and butter.

Running from Thursday, June 2 until Sunday, June 12, the afternoon of English delights will set you back $65 per person.

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Auckland's Huge French Festival Is Returning for 2022

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It first took over Auckland’s waterfront in 2017, attracting 14,000 visitors for one day of Champagne, cheese, croissants and pétanque. In subsequent years Auckland’s beloved French Festival only got bigger and better — until the fateful years of 2020 and 2021 which saw the festival cancelled amid the COVID outbreak.

Now the festival, the brainchild of the team from local French bistro Le Chef, is finally returning for its fourth edition. Set to once again take over Shed 10 for two days in June, the 2022 edition of the festival promises delicious eats and drinks, language classes, music, pétanque, and short film screenings.

Running from Saturday, June 11 until Sunday, June 12, the festival is sure to provide you with plenty of joie de vivre, whether you’re a French ex-pat wanting a taste of all things home or just a lover of the chic European city.

Have your breakfast ‘à la française’ with coffee and a croissant, enjoy a glass of wine from the motherland while stocking up on bottles for home, discover the world’s less tiring sport, soak up an ever-rotating collection of French short films, or sit back and listen to local music — they really have it all covered. Food offerings from previous years have included pastries, crêpes, fresh baguettes, escargot, macarons and all sorts of other French delicacies.

More information on vendors and entertainment is still to come, but food lovers and epicureans should put this rendezvous in their diary now.

Auckland’s French Festival will take over Shed 10 on Saturday, June 11 from 9am-10pm and Sunday, June 12 from 9am-4pm, with the One Night in France dinner taking place on the evening of Friday, June 9. Entry tickets to the festival cost $10 each, with more information available here.

The post Auckland’s Huge French Festival Is Returning for 2022 appeared first on Concrete Playground.

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Auckland's Finger-Lickin' Fried Chicken Festival Is Finally Coming Back This Winter

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If you consider yourself one of the country’s finest fried chook aficionados, your Superbowl approaches. As part of the Elemental AKL Festival, the city’s beloved Fried Chicken Festival is making its hotly anticipated return to Auckland.

When we say this is one of the most popular events on the city’s calendar, we mean it. Tickets to Auckland’s first fried chicken celebration in 2018 sold out in 19 minutes. The event at Parnell’s La Cigale French market was so crammed that attendees had to wait over an hour for a sniff of fried poultry. In 2019 it moved to Queens Wharf venue Shed 10 where it welcomed chicken lovers by the hundreds.

Last year, of course, it was scheduled to make its triumphant return to the waterfront on August 21— until the country went into a snap level 4 lockdown on August 17, and fried chicken fans had to resort to making their own pale imitations in their home kitchens.

Now it’s finally coming back once more, with a lineup of some of the country’s best food trucks ready to sling all the chook punters can get their greasy mitts on.

Auckland’s Fried Chicken Festival will take place on Saturday, July 30. Tickets are on sale now, with more information and further vendors yet to be announced.

The post Auckland’s Finger-Lickin’ Fried Chicken Festival Is Finally Coming Back This Winter appeared first on Concrete Playground.

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New Zealand International Film Festival Has Set Its 2022 Dates and Announced Its First Seven Movies

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Cinephiles of Aotearoa, your movie-watching version of Christmas is almost here — the kind that entices you into darkened theatres to catch the latest and greatest in international cinema. That’d be the New Zealand International Film Festival, which has confirmed its return from July–September and unveiled the first seven films on its program. Yes, you now have plenty to look forward to.

NZIFF 2022 will hit up 13 cities and towns across the country, starting in Auckland on Thursday, July 28. It’ll then head to Wellington from Thursday, August 4 — and to Christchurch and Dunedin the following week, on Thursday, August 11. Exact dates for its other stopovers haven’t yet been revealed, but movie lovers in Hamilton, Tauranga, Hawke’s Bay, New Plymouth, Palmerston North, Masterton, Nelson, Timaru and Gore can still start getting excited.

Leading the bill so far: The Good Boss, a dark workplace satire that sees Javier Bardem turn in a phenomenal (and sinister yet charming) performance; Meet Me in the Bathroom, a first-hand snapshot of New York’s early-00s music scene, complete with The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and LCD Soundsystem; and Lost Illusions, the sumptuous and moving seven-time Cesar Award-winning tale of a young poet with big dreams, which is adapted from the novel by Honoré de Balzac.

Or, there’s also Navalny, a fly-on-the-wall doco about the Russian opposition leader poisoned with a nerve agent; intimate British drama Ali & Ava, by The Selfish Giant‘s Clio Barnard; and documentaries about Kurt Vonnegut and Leonard Cohen.

Further titles will be unveiled over the coming months, with the full lineup set to release in July. As always, NZIFF will showcase flicks direct from Cannes and other major international fests, as well as homegrown fare — including its popular shorts programs New Zealand’s Best and Ngā Whanaunga Māori Pasifika Shorts.

The New Zealand International Film Festival will open in Auckland on Thursday, July 28, then tour to 12 other cities and towns across August and September. For more information, head to the festival website.

The post New Zealand International Film Festival Has Set Its 2022 Dates and Announced Its First Seven Movies appeared first on Concrete Playground.

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A Major Exhibition of Ancient Greek Treasures Is Finally Coming to Auckland After a Two-Year Delay

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Whether you’ve been fascinated with ancient Greece since you studied classics at school, or you also just watched Troy on DVD about 500 times back in 2004, you won’t want to miss a huge scale international exhibition coming to Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Ancient Greeks: Athletes, Warriors and Heroes finally arrives on our shores next month from the British Museum’s world-renowned collection. It’s set to be the largest selection of ancient artefacts ever loaned by the museum to New Zealand.

On show from Friday, June 10 until Sunday, November, 6, the exhibition will showcase a wide range of treasures and stories from ancient Greece. Those include a selection of iconic sculptures from the ‘Mausoleum at Halikarnassos’ — one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World — and a gold lion-headed pendant which harks back to around 450–400 BC.

The exhibition was originally meant to be on show in 2020 — those of you with excellent memories might remember we covered the announcement back in 2019. But of course, as was the case with many scheduled 2020 events, it was postponed amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns.

Tickets are $25 for adults and $12 for children aged 5-13, while under-fives can scoot in for free. While you’re at the museum, we’d heavily encourage checking out ‘Peter’, the 67-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton that’s also taking up residence for the next few months.

The post A Major Exhibition of Ancient Greek Treasures Is Finally Coming to Auckland After a Two-Year Delay appeared first on Concrete Playground.

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Elemental AKL's First Lineup of Events, Dining Experiences and Exhibitions in July Has Been Unveiled

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Auckland’s annual winter celebration of arts, eats and beats Elemental AKL returns this winter from Thursday, July 14 until Sunday, July 31, with over 30 free and ticketed events between eateries, bars, theatres, stadiums and public spaces across Tāmaki Makaurau.

Now in its fourth year, the festival is put on each year by Auckland Unlimited in an effort to showcase the region’s diverse food and culture and encourage visitation outside of peak months.

Returning in 2022 after last year’s sell-out season is much-loved orchestral dance music mashup, Synthony. For its latest outing, the event will see the Auckland Symphony Orchestra and a selection of local DJs combine to play the biggest dance tracks of the last 30 years — all set to a spectacular light and laser show. A new musical director is taking up the baton this year, so expect a few surprises.

As with every Elemental AKL festival, food events feature heavily throughout the first lineup. This year’s lineup includes a table talk series with top chefs, culinary crawls and mystery dining across some of Auckland’s most iconic dining strips. Cosy winter dining igloos The Snugs are returning to Aotea Square after a sell-out season last year, as well as the annual Fried Chicken Festival and a cocktail masterclass at the Cordis’ bar, Our Land is Alive.

This year, Aucklanders will also be able to attend a silent disco city walk, be dazzled by a winter light show in Takapuna, attend a riddle-filled secret party quest, stroll an East Auckland art trail and take part in a five-course Pasifika dining ritual.

Further events will be announced in the lead up to the festival.

Elemental AKL will take place across Tāmaki Makaurau from 14 July to 1 August, 2021. For the full program, head to the official festival website.

The post Elemental AKL’s First Lineup of Events, Dining Experiences and Exhibitions in July Has Been Unveiled appeared first on Concrete Playground.

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Chasing and Capturing Bioluminescence Around Auckland

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We’re here to help you find the best bioluminescence Auckland has!

If you’ve been keeping up with local news, you may have heard that bioluminescence has made its way to Auckland’s shores. Glowing brilliant blue when the sun goes down, it really is a sight to behold!

To help you find bioluminescence in Auckland, we’ve invited Grant Birley to join us. Chasing bioluminescence in and around Auckland (and New Zealand) has become a real passion of his. From the first time he saw it and captured it he knew it was something special. Now he’s here to share the magic with you.

To help you find bioluminescence in Auckland, we’ve invited Grant Birley to join us. Chasing bioluminescence in and around Auckland (and New Zealand) has become a real passion of his. From the first time he saw it and captured it he knew it was something special. Now he’s here to share the magic with you.

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Auckland's Month-Long Lineup of Events, Gigs and Exhibitions For NZ Music Month Has Just Dropped

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Now the country is sitting pretty at orange level, live gigs and music are back, baby — especially apparent today as Auckland Live has just dropped its stacked lineup for this year’s Te Marama Puoro O Aotearoa/New Zealand Music Month.

We’re calling it now: this year’s NZ Music Month might just be the biggest one since it first launched in 1997. With a series of free and paid events, performances and exhibitions across the city centre, Auckland is set to once again really show off its status as a UNESCO City of Music.

This year’s theme is ‘Level Up’, with event organisers keen to showcase a range of New Zealand musicians hitting new strides in their music, as well as a series of up-and-comers you should definitely have on your radar. To celebrate, Auckland Live is putting on a series of events and activations platforming young artists, so you can head along and support some emerging talent.

One for the diary is Young Gig Makers – Indie Rock in the Garden, which is being held at the Civic’s Wintergarden on Saturday, May 14, and will see four of the country’s emerging indie artists (including previous Rockquest finalists and Parachute winners) take the stage. Who knows, they might be our next biggest export, and in years to come you can say you got to see them before they headlined Coachella.

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