Colour and culture for Auckland’s Artweek and Heritage Festival
Children’s art work displays and walking tours around Albert Street punctuated the month of October for the City Rail Link through its participation in Auckland’s Artweek and Heritage Festivals.
A little while ago, we asked year 6 students to draw pictures about where in their imagination they’d want to go on a train once the CRL tunnels are built. Since then, we have been rewarded with thousands of pieces of work – each one unique and wonderful.
The CRL celebrated Artweek by displaying some of these masterpieces at various places around the CBD.
These artworks will eventually be printed on to ceramic tiles and built into the wall lining of the Aotea Station. We wanted Year 6 students’ artworks because the CRL will be built just as they are finishing high school, and they will benefit from the CRL project as they travel to school and work.
Although the artworks won’t be on display until after the Aotea Station is built in 2024, we wanted to give the public a preview of some of these awesome works. You can see the kids’ artworks on the Connectus container at Wolfe Street and on the CRL construction fencing at Lower Queen Street.
Even though we’ve received over 3000 works, we still want more. If you’re not sure whether the school you’re connected with has submitted artwork – then please get in touch with us at Info@CityRailLink.govt.nz.
As well as Artweek, we put on two events as part of the 2019 Auckland Heritage Festival; one being a series of tours around historic Albert Street and the other a display of the archaeological finds associated with digging rail tunnels through a bustling metropolis.
The Albert Street tours started at the Bluestone Room where the group were fascinated to see for their own eyes one of the oldest working wells in the city and the plaque commemorating Helen Clarke, who saved the building from being demolished.
The tour then moved onto the Bluestone Wall which happens to be one of the oldest pieces of roading construction in Auckland. Participants were interested to hear the CRL would be dismantling the wall piece by piece and reinstating it in exactly the same order one metre to the east to allow for tunnel construction.
Next stop on the tour was St Patricks Cathedral with its amazing history, before finishing up at the Shakespeare hotel and brewery – the oldest brewpub in New Zealand.
The Shakespeare is also the site of our second planned Heritage Festival event – the display and discussion of all the archaeological finds unearthed during CRL excavation. During this talk, project architects Clough and Associates will present their findings on these interesting artefacts, such as the bottle of Mexican hair renewer, strange wooden spears and bits of 30,000-year-old tree fragments.