Festivals to bring us together
By Claire Mabey (Verb Wellington, Director)
Wow. We can’t quite believe we managed to pull of a Festival in 2020. Between 5 - 8 November 2020 we ran nearly 60 events that celebrated Aotearoa writers and stories. Our LitCrawl on Saturday 7 November was as busy as ever and almost every other event reached its full capacity.
The level of work that our writers are making is so astonishingly high. I am constantly blown away by what I read and what I hear from those who put pen to paper and gift us with stories and ideas. I think that in this 2020 we all needed to come together to feel that. That sounds a little woo woo but I think it’s true (and I rhymed). But this year of Covid-19 has been stressful and unpredictable. It’s been exhausting. Those of us in the business of making events feel that. But we also have been so lucky here in Aotearoa and we’ve been able to continue to meet up and share. That alchemy was so palpable during Verb Festival. I could tell that both sides of the stage need it. Writers and readers connected with each other over a mutual need to share and talk - to try to understand, to express, to create a little magic together.
Thank you hugely to everyone who spoke, wrote and published in 2020. Thank you hugely to everyone who read, bought a book, shared an article, came to an event. Thank you to our incredible Verb Community who support our work year around. Thank you to our amazing sponsors and partners including National Library of New Zealand, Creative New Zealand, Wellington City Council, Lion Foundation, Bowen Galleries, VUP, Allen & Unwin, Vic Books, Rotary Club of North Wellington, ReadNZ, and BooksellersNZ.
We’re now working on The Garden Party, a new festival experience for Wellington. It’s an exciting new thing! We have partnered up with The Spinoff who share our mad enthusiasm for making things and we have booked The Wellington Botanic Soundshell for Saturday 20 and Sunday 21 February. It’s going to be a free festival and we’ll have writers, musicians and food trucks and stalls. It’s a little slice of festival dreamland — bringing us together into an outdoor environment with grass under out toes and flowers blooming in our periphery.
We’ve made a few line-up announcements but more are to come — we’ll have it all out by 18 December (After which date I’m on holiday and I hope you’re all going to do that too. Boy we need it. We got books to read and swims to partake in).
For those who like statistics, here’s a few from this year’s Verb Festival:
6000 Attendances
57 events
154 Writers
1 Kim Hill
27 venues
a lot of social media impressions - over 300,000K over a few days in November and over 2mil reach in domestic media
After The Garden Party in Feb 2021 we’ll be getting ready for Verb Festival 2021, 4 - 7 November.
Jehan Casinader and Charlotte Graham-McLay at Bicycle Junction for LitCrawl 2020.
If you had a good time at Verb Festival this year then do consider joining the Verb Community. Our members support events like that all year, and writers residencies too. Perks include discounts tickets, merch and special Verb Community events.
