There's a lot to get excited about in next year's Auckland Arts Festival, but the biggest news is the addition of the new Festival Playground down at Wynyard Quarter's Silo Park.
Promising to bring a true festival vibe to the event, the Festival Playground will be home to free family events and festival highlights, including shows by Neil Finn with the APO, India's sitar virtuoso Anoushka Shankar, soul superstar Lee Fields and New Zealand's legendary good-time party band Eru Dangerspiel, who will assemble his all-star band to open the Festival Playground with a celebratory performance in fine, funky fashion.
A food pavilion in the Playground will house lots of neat treats to eat and, to make use of the park's namesake, there will even be shows performed inside the six towering silos. The gigs are called Sonic Silos and will see acts such as Jonathan Crayford and Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir perform inside the unusual, cavernous acoustic spaces.
At the heart of the Festival Playground will be a giant 400sq m House of Mirrors. This maze, which takes 40 tonnes of steel and 15 tonnes of glass to construct, has been variously described as "mesmerising", "hypnotic" and, more worryingly, "disorientating", so plan on getting lost and spending a lot of time looking at your endless reflections as you wander aimlessly seeking an exit...
