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Downtown Britomart will be turned into "Red Square" for Auckland's festival, AK07, in March in a capitalism-inspired move that has nothing to do with communism.
Red Square will become the hub of the third biennial festival as a gesture to the colour of one of the event's main sponsors, Westpac. The area behind the Britomart transport centre and historic buildings will include a festival club, The Famous Spiegeltent, cafes and bars and a specially laid lawn for the two-week event from March 9-25.
Prime Minister Helen Clark last night launched the programme for AK07 with nearly 60 events ranging from local and international theatre, dance, cabaret, music and visual arts indoors and outdoors.
The Famous Spiegeltent, an authentic 1930s Belgian cabaret tent with hundreds of mirrors set into the wooden walls, will host nightly events from cabaret to local artists like Dave Dobbyn, Don McGlashan, the Topp Twins and Goldenhorse. The tent was last in Auckland six years ago.
The pavilion at Britomart will be turned into a festival club with nightly local and overseas performances, including the controversial and hilarious Australian Eddie Perfect, Nathan Haines and Jennifer Ward-Lealand.
A possible fringe festival is being worked on and details are still being finalised for a host of free events in Red Square.
Festival director David Malacari said Aucklanders can look forward to the best festival yet with a "diverse, challenging and exciting" programme building on AK05, which attracted more than 260,000 people and generated $11.4 million of spending in the city.
Mr Malacari said the Auckland festival was still small - on a par with Tasmania's - and had a lot of room for growth. To help fund the projected growth in a strategic business plan, the festival trust has asked the Auckland City Council to increase funding from $2 million to $2.4 million in the two-year lead-up to AK09. The council's arts and recreation committee yesterday referred the funding request to next year's budget round.
"We still don't believe that for a city the size of Auckland that we are as big as we need to be ... we probably have about a third of the budgeted turnover of Wellington [Festival] in a city that is five times the size," Mr Malacari said.
