The wine bar is the tell. When Alan Brenner pours a glass of aromatic moschofilero – a wine big in Greece but virtually unknown here – that’s when you know Kirikiriroa Hamilton and the Waikato region have changed.
“The wine scene here has been underground but it’s becoming more appreciated,” Brenner says.
Brenner is Canadian but he’s lived all over. Five years ago, he moved from Melbourne to Waikato with his partner, a Hamiltonian. It was supposed to be a stop-off on the way to somewhere else but they stayed. “The whole vibe of Hamilton is on the up and up.”
The wine bar in which Brenner works is called Amphora. It has an adventurous wine list compiled by owner Kieran Clarkin, a Hamiltonian who went away for about 20 years, came back and stayed.
The bar is not on the high street but in Made, a new “urban precinct” development in Hamilton East. A few years ago, Hamilton East was known for its students and takeaways. There are no funky laneways, but Made, with its eateries, fresh-food market and artisanal goods, does an exemplary job of making it feel like there are.
Back at Amphora, Clarkin explains his philosophy. “We’re aiming for people who may not know much [about wine] but who are interested,” he says. “I’m realistic; I wasn’t expecting Melbourne.”
You hear a lot of this in Waikato, people comparing their place with other places. Everyone is aware they’re fighting perceptions: Fieldays, farming, rugby. It used to be true. Hamilton was a service town for Waikato farmers. Its economy is still very much built on primary industries, says Rosie Spragg, general manager of economic development at Te Waka, Waikato’s regional economic development agency, but that’s only part of the story. The city itself is no longer a cow town, even if that’s part of the region’s self-mythology ‒ a badge of dubious honour, like Wellington weather or Auckland traffic.
Hamiltonians talk about Auckland’s traffic as much as Aucklanders. It’s used as a defence mechanism or perhaps a pre-emptive strike, a reason to stay right where they are, thank you. Raglan’s beaches come up a lot, too, usually when someone’s telling you they’re just 30-45 minutes away, with the inevitable addendum that it’ll take you that long to get to an urban Auckland beach in traffic anyway, which is often the case.
For all the defensiveness – the city’s slogan, “Hamilton: more than you expect”, doesn’t help – Kirikiriroa is a city reborn. And the energy is coming from unexpected places. The arts are quietly thriving, helped along by a burgeoning commitment to philanthropy, a rapidly rising population that makes Kirikiriroa the fourth-largest city in Aotearoa, and comparatively modest accommodation prices. According to Infometrics, the average house value in Hamilton in 2023 was $802,719, compared with a national average of $920,930.
Tech takes off
The tech sector, meanwhile, is humming, and it’s not just agritech. Think weightless businesses, low footprint, high value with a global reach. They could set up anywhere. That they choose Waikato speaks to the health of the region and the perceived lifestyle advantages it offers.
“The primary sector continues to be a driving force but it’s kind of enabled things to grow on top,” says Spragg who returned to the region during Covid and stayed. “Artificial intelligence is a real area of strength but it’s often under-the-radar smaller businesses, perhaps family owned, rather than those who’ve sought venture capital.”
Chris Yu isn’t against venture capitalists but he says that approach isn’t right for his company, Torutek. “I don’t believe in the Silicon Valley model where you just keep burning cash,” he says. “We believe every step we take is a measurable step and the customer is willing to pay for our work, and we deliver value.”
Torutek – formed by three University of Waikato mates, hence the “toru” in the name – snuggles next to other go-ahead companies at Waikato Innovation Park in Ruakura. Ruakura was and is famous for its agritech, but only some of the businesses at the park do that. Torutek doesn’t: it makes computer hardware and software, including artificial intelligence. If you’ve taken an Auckland bus, you’ll have benefited from one of Torutek’s collaborations with Auckland Transport. The system that tells you, in te reo Māori and English, where your bus is stopping? That’s them.
“It’s a simple thing that delivers value,” Yu says. “It makes sense and it’s a positive step to help people.”
The product upon which Torutek built its reputation, Guardian, also helps people, but it’s not a simple thing. It’s a sophisticated facial recognition system that helps with gambling addictions. It’s used in pubs, clubs and casinos throughout New Zealand and South Australia. Yu accepts that some will call it Orwellian, but Guardian uses a Ministry of Health database comprised entirely of people who have asked to be added to the system, which excludes them from gambling sites by sending an alert to the premises.
Yu studied in Kirikiriroa (the company sponsors a scholarship at the university) and, like Clarkin and many others, left for a few years before returning to stay.
“The office is only 10 minutes from my home,” he says, on the verge of mentioning traffic but stopping himself. “The kids go to good schools; we live on a lifestyle block.”
Damon Kelly, who founded Enlighten Designs 26 years ago, has the means to live anywhere in the world, and the sorts of customers who suggest a shift would be beneficial. Kelly spends plenty of time in Seattle, New York and Australia, but Waikato is home. He was born there, left for a bit as a kid, came back, stayed. He went to the university, hires graduates from its computer science programme and sits on the university business school’s advisory board. When you ask him why he stays, he mentions Auckland traffic, and that he spent the weekend in Raglan. But his answer really boils down to, why leave?
“The business was growing 40% year on year, so when everything’s working, you don’t go, ‘Let’s change location,’” he says. “And when you get really good at what you do, your playground stops being your local area and starts being the world, and tech kind of means that work’s what you do, not where you are. Especially through Covid, no one cared where you were from, and it was that period that saw our international business blossom.”
The blooms included running a data journalism program for Microsoft. “One of the things around data journalism is being able to get true data and then visualise that in a real way so people can understand it.”
Enlighten Designs’ data visualisation tool for the 2019 European Parliament elections, developed with Microsoft and online news site Politico, was the most viewed dashboard of the election.
Arts come alive
Businesses such as Yu’s and Kelly’s attract talent to the region. Once there, that talent wants things to do, because, apart from the basics of living, we crave things that make life great. For an increasing number of people, arts fill that role.
When you meet them, the movers in Hamilton’s arts community come in pairs. Gus Sharp is the general manager of Waikato Regional Theatre, an $80 million building project due to open early next year. The 1300-seat space is the biggest of its type built for years in Aotearoa, and once completed will be state of the art.
Sharp is accompanied by his communications manager, Mark Servian. Servian has been in Kirikiriroa 35 years. He moved up from Wellington and stayed. “Even in the late 80s, I thought it was more interesting in Hamilton than Wellington,” says Servian. “People didn’t agree with me at the time, but we’re getting there.”
Sharp also moved up from Wellington but he’s a newbie, here for the theatre project. He is buzzing with positivity and possibility, and when he talks about the theatre he speaks in terms of transformation and activation rather than Shakespeare and Mozart.
Hamilton’s CBD was more in need of the former than the latter, especially at the south end of the main drag, Victoria St, where the theatre is going up next to the museum. For a long time, it was the place you’d go to do your hard-core drinking and, as a result, the site of the usual disturbances.
“The police were constantly butting heads down this end,” Sharp says. “But the south end of Victoria St becomes a different sort of situation with a theatre.”
He sees it and its surrounds as the centre of a new CBD, where people come for more than just a pint or few of Waikato Draft.
“Wrapping a hospitality precinct around [the theatre] is trying to enshrine that idea of a night out comparable to any other city in the world. You go for a show but you make a night of it. You go for a drink or a meal before or after. A show may be the focal point of the evening, but it’s not the entirety of it.”
Sharp believes that the regional theatre performs the same role as the Auckland and Christchurch town halls and the capital’s Michael Fowler Centre.
“It’s not just performances. It’s citizenship ceremonies, political rallies, graduations. It makes sense to place that at the heart of your city so venues of this size and utility serve a number of purposes. One of them is performance and live events, [but] the idea of a theatre only having shows is long gone.”
For Sharp, the theatre is a symbol of where the region is today, and its ambition for the future.
“[It shows that] Waikato has satisfied most of its utilitarian demands and now it is saying, ‘What do we want our children to be able to experience? What do we want to be known for in this region?’ A city of this size should have a civic venue of scale, placed on the riverbank. The attitude shaping the city is, ‘If this is what we want, we’re going to get on and do it.’”
Sharp’s words would resonate with Nancy Caiger. She is one of the people who does stuff. When we meet, Caiger is the plus one of Sasha McLaren, who is business development manager for Boon Arts, which co-ordinates several public art events.
Broad brush strokes
One of them, the Boon Street Art Festival, daubs the city in murals. They’re huge and inescapable, down every lane. Many of them are extremely beautiful and demand a moment to stop, admire, reflect. There’s also the Boon Sculpture Trail, which runs until March 31.
McLaren moved to Kirikiriroa in 2002 for university and stayed. Her brush strokes can be found across the region; as well as Boon, McLaren is creative director of video production outfit Nimbus Media, which does a lot of work in and around the city. Separate to that, she and her husband and business partner, David Woodcock, are working on a visual storytelling project with 20 rural marae.
Caiger grew up in Singapore, enjoyed a successful career in London’s financial sector, moved to Hamilton in the early 1990s and stayed. She’s one of the city’s most prominent arts philanthropists, but more importantly, she’s a ball of infectious energy, the sort of person who not only gets things done but encourages, cajoles and enables others to do so, too.
She’s treasurer of Boon Arts but has been involved in almost everything to do with the Hamilton arts scene, and her business smarts have proved invaluable in a perpetually underfunded sector.
Among Caiger’s strengths is an ability to connect people. In 2010, lamenting the lack of public art, she formed MESH Sculpture Hamilton with other businesspeople and art lovers to fundraise. There are now four major sculptures dotted around Kirikiriroa, by important artists such as Michael Parekōwhai, Robert Jahnke and Lonnie Hutchinson.
Working with the river
There were no sculptures in the city when MESH started, says Caiger. “We sat down together and said, ‘Let’s make it happen.’ It starts with people who want to make it happen translating that into an action plan, then making it happen.” Simple.
We head out to the sculpture trail, where artists are installing their works. The pieces face and interact with the river. This is new – for all that it’s the symbol of the city, the Waikato River used to be cut off from the CBD by Victoria St. On the sculpture trail, one of the artworks references an eel net in the river. Spotting possibilities, Caiger approached upmarket riverside bar and restaurant Mr Pickles, which is now preparing a special eel dish .
“It’s not just putting a few sculptures up,” Caiger says. “It’s how do we embrace the whole city, how do we involve different organisations? So there’s this sense of wanting to embrace everyone else. We recognise we cannot work in silos.”
Which is why there’s a two-way connection joining the sculptures with the Hamilton Arts Festival Toi Ora ki Kirikiriroa (on until March 3).
Festival director Geoff Turkington (moved here “by accident” six years ago) and associate director Nick Walsh (been here all his life) are excited but nervous. Last year’s festival coincided with Cyclone Gabrielle. The show did go on but audiences stayed away, which was financially problematic for an event run on a shoestring (“We lost a fortune,” admits Turkington).
When it’s not being washed away, though, the festival is special. Partly, that’s down to the setting, Hamilton Gardens, a world-class venue and by some distance the best public space of its kind in the country. It’s also down to the programming. The two things are related, with several site-specific shows created for the gardens. Additionally, the quality is high, the prices are low – including lots of free performances – and the artists are almost entirely Kiwi. Whisper it, but several arts sector people have said they believe this year’s Hamilton festival programme to be better than Auckland’s.
“The fact that there is a perception Hamilton is a cultural wasteland actually motivates people,” says Turkington. “There are so many incredible musicians, artists, actors – the theatre scene’s been strong since forever. People want to do things in new and interesting ways.”
I head back to Made for a coffee from Grey Roasting Co. Sam Peake – Waikato born and bred – is front of house. He’s a flat white man and not embarrassed to say it. “Our goal is to make good coffee without being daunting. Coffee used to be about bullshit and how your beans tasted of mandarin. Now, it’s about creativity without that inhibiting culture.”
Grey’s owner is Dove Chen. Peake says Dove would never tell you himself, but he’s a two-time New Zealand barista champion and was a semi-finalist at the 2019 world champs.
“I can’t help seeing potential,” Peake says of his home town. “Things like Made are actively trying to make Hamilton better. How do you excite people? You just give them what they’re asking for.”
The coffee I ask for is superb, as fine as anything you’ll get in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch. But why compare? It’s good enough to stand on its own merits.
Auckland writer Richard Betts lived in Kirikiriroa Hamilton between 1995 and 2000. He didn’t stay, but sometimes, while waiting in traffic, he wonders if he should have.
Warmly Rapt
In January, some 3000 people visited Waikato Museum in downtown Hamilton to see a crochet exhibition. Forget about crocheted dollies or granny square blankets; Lissy and Rudi Robinson-Cole’s neon-bright Wharenui Harikoa takes a traditional craft to a different plane.
The husband and wife spent years carving (Rudi) and hand crocheting (both of them) the full-scale Wharenui Harikoa (House of Joy) in vibrant colours because they wanted it to spark “intergenerational healing and deeply felt joy”.
On entering, visitors are invited to lie down and listen to a soundscape featuring taonga puoro artist Libby Gray and the couple’s nephew, Rewi McLay. “People just drop to the ground,” says Lissy Robinson-Cole (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Kahu). “It’s a space of deep connection as human beings.” A woollen sensory wall, to which visitors can add their own creations, filled up so quickly it had to be replaced.
The creative partnerships forged through the project are as bright as the whare itself. Along the way, the Robinson-Coles have worked with, among others, Christchurch’s Outlaw Yarn to spin their signature chunky neon wool, local and international artists on the whare’s tukutuku panels and immersive media company iSparx on a 3D augmented reality app. They also exhibited their creative process along the way with Auckland gallery owner Tim Melville in solo and group shows. And a collaboration with choreographer Jack Gray led to a Wharenui Harikoa-inspired dance work.
Gray affectionately dubbed the Auckland-based couple, who acknowledge they’re on a steep learning curve when it comes to Aotearoa’s art world, the “Forrest Gumps of New Zealand art”. Which is now possibly more apt given the Robinson-Coles have newly created packaging designs for Cadbury’s Roses chocolates, tying in nicely with Gump’s most famous film quote: “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”
For Waikato Museum, being the first to show the completed Wharenui Harikoa has been sweet, too. Director Liz Cotton says in a typical January, when hot weather diverts crowds to beaches and parks, the museum might average 2000 visitors. This year, Wharenui Harikoa helped it attract about 3000 in January alone, while 1200 turned up for Waitangi Day commemorations, where Lissy and Rudi (Ngāruahine, Te Arawa, Ngāti Pāoa, Waikato ki Tai) shared their love story and kaupapa.
“It’s a really transformative experience,” says Cotton. “You go inside it and it’s just enveloping and warm and reflective. You watch people’s reactions and it’s just beautiful seeing their joy.
“Hamilton will always have its strong farming background, but it’s becoming a really progressive, forward-looking city which is changing a lot – and it’s a young population here as well,” she says.
“Museums are moving away from the perception that we just show ‘old stuff’, and we are thinking about who we are becoming as a community and a nation, reflecting what’s happening in the world, politics and the environment.
“That might not be overtly political. Being in a wharenui which is neon and vibrant and bright can very subtly and very impactfully change people’s thinking and their perspective on things.”
– Dionne Christian
Wharenui Harikoa is at the Waikato Museum until March 17 (waikatomuseum.co.nz).