1 Captions by Amenda Quang Edited by Imogen Staines. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017 (AMBIENT MUSIC) Nelson, New Zealand's second-oldest city, has drawn all comers from across the globe for 175 years, from the first German migrants on the ship St Pauli back in 1843 to more recent arrivals who have been welcomed here as part of the Refugee Resettlement Programme. (AMBIENT MUSIC CONTINUES) My father grew up in Brussels, and my mother in the Italian province of Bari. She always described herself as coming from the heel of Italy's boot. That used to intrigue me as a child. 'Where was the other boot?' I'd wonder. When we came to New Zealand, I thought I'd finally found the other missing boot. So let me introduce you to some of the other locals who share my beautiful home town ` each with a unique cultural story to share. (UPBEAT MUSIC) In this episode of Neighbourhood, we'll meet the Scottish woman who sold her ancestral castle to fund education in Nepal. The lady who left it to me said that she wanted the wee lass to have it and the wee lass could do whatever she wanted. And what I wanted to do was run an organisation in Nepal. A local musician explores her connection to the community. (GROUP SINGS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) That was, uh, a surprise a year ago. I just got a phone call from the Nelson Mail saying, 'You're Nelsonian of the Year for the arts.' We'll discover the work of Nelson's own grand master of Japanese calligraphy. Calligraphy is only one time, one chance, so it needs a concentrated and feeding mind put on to and... (IMITATES WHOOSH). And Nelsonians get together to celebrate the Gay-Straight Alliance. They might not be out at school, they might not be out with their family, they might not be out with their friends, but this is a space where they can be out with peers. I'm Christine Leunens, and this is my neighbourhood. ('NEIGHBOURHOOD' THEME MUSIC) (REFLECTIVE MUSIC) (SEAGULLS CAW) Some of my best work as a writer comes when I'm walking on Tahunanui Beach rather than sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper. At the moment I'm working on my fourth book ` a historical novel, set between Auckland and Paris, about an ill-fated love affair that takes place at the time of the Rainbow Warrior bombing. My novels have been translated into some languages I can't read ` Korean, for instance. It amazes me how a story I dreamed up can emerge out of what are to me mysterious symbols and somehow reach into the hearts and minds of a reader across the globe. To have my novels transcend language is magical to me. I'm, uh, Japanese calligraphy teaching, uh, for... almost do that 18 years. I get the, uh, test from government. It's the master calligrapher's certification. Yes, very, very hard. Not easy (CHUCKLES) because, uh, very, very different kind of, uh, calligraphy. Big one, small one and the letter one. Letter is writing, uh, brush, and another is old classic one, and all of them together have the writing. Very, very hard, yes. Calligraphy is, uh, one time, one chance. Painting is a little bit of that. They` they` they need, uh, repair, or again, again, again, again. But calligraphy is only one time, one chance, so it needs a concentrated and, uh, feeding mind put on to, and... (IMITATES WHOOSH). (LAUGHS) It's very, very` Oh my God, the nerves! (STIRRING MUSIC) (SPEAKS JAPANESE) (PENSIVE PIANO MUSIC) (CONTINUES SPEAKING JAPANESE) I love, uh, teaching New Zealand so much. (LAUGHS) (CONTINUES TO SPEAK JAPANESE) She's really passionate about it, definitely. (LAUGHS) She loves it. (SPEAKS JAPANESE) She's really kind when she teaches. Um, it's really easy for me, and that's why I've been doing it for a long time, I think, yeah. For me, I find the process very meditative, and, um, I'm half Japanese and spent seven years in Japan, and it really connects me to my Japanese roots. And it's very unusual, actually, to have a grand master in Nelson, and for such a small town, um, it's really an honour and a privilege to be able to study with Akiko Crowther ` quite an honour. (BRIGHT PIANO MUSIC) First I married a Japanese guy. His father is a calligrapher, and I learn` I learnt from him, but he don't like the calligraphy, so went, 'OK, fine, OK.' But after that, 22 years old, I divorced. And... And, 'Goodbye,' and I'm so independent, (LAUGHS) and I happy, because he's very, very pushy person. (LAUGHS) I'm 46 years old, middle-ages Japanese, and after that, I met Tim. And he said, 'Could you come with me?' 'What? Where are you going?' 'Eastern Europe.' 'Vienna? Wow!' (LAUGHS) And, 'OK.' And one year later, he's OK (LAUGHS) and married. Yes, yes. It's very hot. Uh, this is, uh, before married. He's very nervous. (LAUGHS) Wet, wet, wet. Tim is painting, and he just started the sumi painting at that time, and he said, 'Could you try do that together?' 'OK. Why not?' I'm so interesting. Oh, and writing to the canvas ` 'Hmm?' Because calligraphy ` every time Japanese paper. But calligraphy in canvas? Why not? 'OK.' And started. That is, uh, very, very interesting for me. We are collaboration work, 2002, in Prague, and moved to the New Zealand, 2005, and started a gallery, 2006, and very, very success. Let's do writing. You are sharing love, right? Love, love,... OK. ...love. I'm writing. Love, love, love. After the 2010 stroke, in the next year, he started, uh, left-hand. Normally, he's writing` a right-hand person, but left hand started, and little by little, the very, very beautiful stroke and the colour, so we are still going to do the, uh, collaboration work. SOFTLY: Down, up. No, down, down. Down, down. Yep! Leave it here. L` Like that. No. Ah, I see. Yeah, because, uh, sort of, like, to cry, yeah. I think very, very movement. Yeah, yep. Good. Oh! Good! Oh, nice. I love this purple, the colour, darling. Mm, mm. Very lovely. Yeah, yeah. It's a` I am so happy with Tim. It's wonderful. Of course, you know, collaboration work there is in Japan, but different ` not wife and husband. English and Japanese ` ah, beautiful. It's good. (DOOR LOCK CLICKS) (REFLECTIVE MUSIC) My Belgian grandfather was taken by the Nazis when he was in his mid-20s and placed in a work camp in Austria. It gave him unbearable pain as an artist to have to use his hands to make ammunition and machinery that would be used against the very allied soldiers who were fighting to free them. He never got over it, and when he was freed, he kept on working with metal, shaping it into works of art that would bring people together instead of metal objects that kill. The way he managed to shape a traumatic time into something more positive that the community can benefit from as a whole has inspired me and influenced my own creative journey. (STIRRING MUSIC) I didn't come out till the age of 23, and I only came out because I was very, very down the line of alcohol and drug clinics ` mental health issues as well. And, um, being single and not being able to shout out from the roofs exactly who I was is exactly what drives you down the wrong path. The year I was born is when homosexuality was decriminalised in New Zealand ` the year I was born. So we're not` I'm a young man. We're not even very far along. You know, in` in employment, in all sorts of things, I don't feel comfortable, um,... because I have to announce it. I feel like I have to announce it to people that I am who I am. And it's very, very, very, um` It can be challenging. (BRIGHT MUSIC) So, Q-Youth is a gay-straight alliance, and what it does is it supports and nurtures young LGBTQI youth in our community ` in the Nelson community, to thrive, to succeed, to do what they need to be and be what they need to be and feel as themselves. That supports all those structures against any sort of issues that may` may arise. They might not be out at school, they might not out with their family, they might not be out with their friends, but this is a space where they can be out with peers and, um, people who can support them. (UPBEAT MUSIC) Nelson can definitely be violent. We are very, very white. We're very bogan. So, we're on Bridge St in Nelson. I always make the joke that when people walk through this street, they, um, put their heads down and they speed up, cos it's not a nice place to be. It's the, uh, red-light district of a little town. It can get quite, um, brutal, and it can get quite violent. And what a shame that our young people can't go out and enjoy themselves like every other person because they are different. And they're not. They're` They're absolutely normal, and there's so many differences in people, yet they are targets. I'm doing this fundraiser because I think it's really important that they have a little bit of money in the kitty, and every last cent comes back to Q-Youth. So the show tonight is, um` is a very simple pantomime, but we have some costumes ` some really, really cool costumes, like UV costumes and stuff ` and we've also got some people who've never ever done it before, so they're dressing up, and they're very, very nervous. But that is beautiful, actually. I love to put things together and stand back and watch, and this` this is what I'm gonna do tonight. My name's Te Maunga, and I was born in Nelson. Nelson isn't a really accepting place for LGBTQ people and mostly for the youth who are LGBTQ. Events like tonight are what we really need at the moment, and it's great. (CHUCKLES) (ELECTRONIC MUSIC) For the club here, what I've always tried to have is a` a safe, like, environment for people with difference. So they` they are able to come in here all dressed up, flamboyant and` and it's just a safe environment. Good environment here tonight. So, yeah, just one last push in the raffles, and you really, really are getting a good deal. The amount of sponsorship and the amount of feedback that we've had is absolutely overwhelming, and it's people saying, 'It's the youth, and that's an important cause, and we wanna stand by that.' And I guess your name is... Claire. (CHEERING) Am I right? Waheyyy! (AMBIENT MUSIC) The main thing about tonight is about getting local businesses on board. These aren't gay businesses or owned or operated by gay people, but they will stand up for the LGBTQI youth. Theo, we're so impressed with the initiative that you've taken to make an event happen in our community. I don't really mind how much money you make, Theo; this is all about us being here and being together. (INTRIGUING INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC) Going forward, I'm looking to be a very big part the Q-Youth. I'm looking to newsletters. I'm looking to, mm, control the funding ` from all sorts of different people, from all sorts of different sponsors ` to carry on the fundraisers and to be a very, very big part of the community. (CLASSICAL PIANO MUSIC) My husband's Franco-German. The children speak English and French. Axel and I tend to use German when we don't want them to understand what we're saying. I still speak a little Italian at home, especially when I'm doing things just like my mum ` cooking, for instance. I cook Italian. My husband does French. We tend to keep our duties separate, lest we get into a debate about the best way to cook pasta. The water has to be as salty as the sea. There has to be enough of it for the pasta to almost drown in, and if you throw the pasta against the wall and it sticks, you've cooked it to death. But when we make pasta at home, it's a real family affair, just like it was when I was growing up. (BRIGHT MUSIC) My name is Durga Aran. And I'm Fionna Heiton. I` I was born in Nepal ` one of the rural villages in Nepal. I was born in Scotland, um, in a place called Paisley, which is, um, a large town next to Glasgow. So we had very, very different backgrounds, and, uh, it's kind of bizarre how we ended up together. I was living in New Zealand, and I was desperate to get into development work. And I ended up in Kathmandu with absolutely no money. I think I had $20 left. Somebody told me about this cheap hotel called the Potala. And there was two Potalas, so I turned up at the Potala where Durga was working, which wasn't the cheap hotel, and he saw me buying very cheap food from the shop next door and eating it under the table, and then he offered me a coffee, and he said I could eat the` eat the food on the table. The next thing, we had a lunch date, and that was almost 19 years ago. (UPBEAT PIANO MUSIC) Dal is, uh, lentil ` cooked lentil. Bhat is rice. Tarkari is the cooked vegetable. So dal bhat tarkari, it's a main meal. In Nepal,... So siblings and cooking food sometimes and then, um, fetching, uh` uh, grass for animals. So that sort of thing I did in, um` when I was young. There was only three children in, um, primary, in my, uh` year three, so that's it. So it didn't get` People didn't send children to the school. Education wasn't priority for them. One main thing is farming and who can grow a lot of rice, who can grow a lot of corn or a lot of millet. (BRIGHT ACOUSTIC MUSIC) When I grew up, Nepal didn't have a kindergarten ` like, a early childhood education system. And with early childhood education, it's the most important part, and if you start to educate the children at 3 and 4 years old, you can change a whole community. And we came up with First Steps Himalaya. We decided to call it Himalaya because the vision was very, very big that we could in fact be working in Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet, India, um, in the future. Living in a small` smallish city like Nelson, you know, you can't keep asking the same people for money. So we took a global approach, and we set up a number of tours in Nepal, and we discovered that our most successful tour was a yoga journey. My story did creep out into the New Zealand news that I actually did, um, inherit a fortified peel tower in Scotland from a very distant relative. It was amazing luck to be left this beautiful building, but the reality was that we were never gonna go and live in it, and it was cold and dark, and, um, it was built in 1425 and situated between Edinburgh and Newcastle, and when I inherited it, the lady who left it to me said that she wanted the wee lass to have it, and the wee lass could do whatever she wanted, and what I wanted to do was run an organisation in Nepal and travel. A long, long time later, we have sold Darnick Tower. So it really was an incredible gift to` to help us do what we do. (JOYFUL MUSIC) Oh, it smells great. We cooking some vegetables. Mm. Mm. The kids have grown up eating dal bhat, cos we've spent a lot of time out in Nepal. Um, one year we spent six months with the kids in Nepal, and they had to eat dal bhat every single day, which was quite hard. We haven't got used to morning dal bhat. We can't quite do it for breakfast, but evening, it's fine. The kids have been brought up to go to Nepal almost every year. They haven't been back since the earthquake, but I'm sure we'll go back in the next year or so. I think it's been amazing. They` Our kids have been in and out of school, travelling. We've homeschooled them. We've taken maths and English and science up` up mountains and treks, and they've only ever benefitted from it. They feel very strongly about` about Nepal, and they've got lots of relatives who've got one set of clothes, and they've got everything in comparison, but they all get on, and it's just lovely. Well, we've got lots of stories. GIRL: Yeah. Yeah. We used to live in a house next to the prime minister in Nepal, and so the security guard used to point his gun through our kitchen window. Mm. Of course, it was kinda interesting watching a foreigner in a house with a Nepali, so they used to have binoculars and everything. (ALL LAUGH) LAUGHS: It was kind of unnerving at lunchtime. That would be unnerving. Mm. The vision's very big with First Steps Himalaya. I would like to see child-friendly education right across the Himalayas, so probably will, (LAUGHS) knowing me. I'm quite ambitious. Um, because there are millions of children out there who` who haven't got the ability to have the education that they deserve. (ORCHESTRA PLAYS STIRRING MUSIC) I inherited my love of music from my Italian side. My grandfather played clarinet in the Italian Army. I love the idea of him holding a clarinet and not a gun. I play violin with the Nelson Symphony Orchestra. We have musicians from all over the world ` Europe, Africa, North and South America, Asia. Our cultural heritages blend, and we all speak the same musical language. We each have our part to play ` our moment when it's time for our instruments to speak. When we're the most attentive to each other, an incredible harmony ensues, and we all seem to feel it. Something has happened that is greater than the sum of all of us. (ALL PLAY ROUSING CHORD) (TRANQUIL PIANO MUSIC) My mother was part of` Uh, there were four children, and they lived in Uganda, and they had an amazing life there. Uh, lots of Indians did go. You know, lots of reasons to` to go out there ` for work and for lifestyle ` had an amazing lifestyle. But then things started to go bad. Sort of, the late, uh, 1960s, there was the expulsion of the` all the Asians and anyone who was white, anyone who was Asian. They had a deadline ` three months to leave. They just had �50 in their pocket, and so then my family got all scattered, and some family went back to India, and some went to the Middle East. So, yes, that's how my family ended up in England, in Britain. Yeah, my upbringing was, um,... very white, middle class in Wiltshire, but I always knew I was different. There was a lot of racism at school, and I would try and put talcum powder on my face to try and be like everybody else, and I knew I was different, but I wanted to try and fit in. And it wasn't until I was an adult, studying classical music, and I just remember seeing Indian violin played, and then I went to India shortly after and discovered this part of me that I knew had always been there, and then I changed what I studied, and then I finished my degree, and it was in world music. (PLAYS TAMBOURA) (SINGS HAUNTING MELODY) This is called a tamboura ` sometimes pronounced tanpura ` and it's used for North Indian classical music. It's a drone instrument, so it's meant to add as the background, keeping the pitch of the first and the fifth note of the scale of the raga. This part here's the shape. This is made out of a gourd, and they, um, scoop out all the flesh and the seeds, and then it's dried for many days, and so a lot of work goes into this. (CONTINUES SINGING) I never had my own tanpura, and it's a very special instrument. They weren't that easy to get hold of. When I got to Nelson, I was lent one. I used it for, you know, probably a few years, but then I, um` I was asked if I could give it back, which at the time was a bit of a shock, cos I was quite attached to it, and I thought, 'How am I gonna carry on with my music and` and do all these sessions and...?' I did say to the meditation group that I used it at, 'You know, we might have to think about another instrument, because I haven't got the tanpura any more.' And a couple of weeks later, I'd got back from Christmas with the family. There was a case at the doorstep, and inside it was a tanpura, and one of the people from our group had actually been to India and had, sort of, kind of, picked one up on the way home. He was on his way to, sort of, catch the train back, and he had a slight window of opportunity, and he went and he bought one, and it's not an easy thing. I would never want to ask somebody to go in India to get one, cos it's quite, you know, a responsibility to carry through customs. So I do love this tanpura. It will always be very special for that reason. (PEACEFUL MUSIC) I love Nelson's sunshine. I love the art scene here. You know, I've had friends from all parts of the world, which I would've never had in Britain. I've got a choir of 130 children. I also set up a samba group. I have done lots of work in schools, where I've worked with teachers to encourage them to teach music to the children. So just basically try and, um, get out there and bring as much music to the community as possible. That was a` a surprise a year ago. I just got a phone call from the Nelson Mail saying, 'You're Nelsonian of the Year for the arts.' People nominate you for the work you do, and it was an amazing award to have, and I felt very privileged to get it. (BAND PLAYS TRANQUIL MUSIC) And now from your throat and chest area. Nice big smile. And from your heart. We're at Evolve Festival, and we're in Anand's amazing Chai Tent that travels the world at all the festivals. (GROUP SINGS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) Uh, we had a music, mantra, meditation session, and it was on loving kindness and compassion. (GROUP PLAY HAUNTING MELODY, CONTINUE SINGING) Music, I think, is such a joyful and uplifting subject, and I've seen so many people get so much out of it, you know, and it's transformed their lives. (WARM MUSIC) What I love about Nelson is the way it values arts the way the great European cities do, and yet it's much smaller than those Old World cultural centres. I can stroll through galleries and workshops then step outside, and there's this extraordinary natural environment surrounding us. (WARM MUSIC CONTINUES) I feel that New Zealand's diversity gives us a perfect balance between the Old World and the New. Looking to the future, I hope Nelson can continue its grand old tradition of welcoming newcomers and celebrating all the gifts that diversity brings. Captions by Amenda Quang Edited by Imogen Staines. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017