1 Captions by Starsha Samarasinghe. Edited by Ingrid Lauder. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017 (FUNKY MUSIC) Auckland CBD is split right down the middle by the mighty divide of Queen St. To the east lies some of Auckland's grand Victorian buildings, the art gallery, the university and the High Court. (FUNKY MUSIC) But it's no longer a bastion of New Zealand's colonial past. Thanks to AUT and the University of Auckland, this area is full of diverse and vibrant young people from all across the globe. (FUNKY MUSIC) I am of Egyptian, Turkish and Sudanese descent. My family moved here from Alexandria, then to Jordan, before we were finally granted refugee status here in New Zealand. I live and work in east of Queen St. I love living here. The diversity of people makes me feel right at home. Let's hear some of the stories that locals have to share. We'll trace the journey of a young woman from Pakistan, from dark days, to a place she feels she can help others. My sisters and I, we've started this website. It's called, 'Your Fight is Over'. We are creating a platform for people to share their stories. So when anyone who is going through a tough time or they're suffering, when they look at the website and they see that this person is a real person and they've gone through these things, and this is how they felt. An artist born in India puts her unique frame on a story of migration. What we have here is somebody who is trying to jump the border to get on to the other side. And the work is like a prayer and a wish for him. So it says, 'May the spring bloom beneath your feet.' We'll share an Indonesian dish with a local who lives east of Queen St. Cooking and dance ` two of my biggest passions. They have structure. You do need some training, (LAUGHS) and it's all about practice makes perfect. So, yes, in that sense, cooking is like dance. And a mix of cultures gets creativity flowing, when east meets west. When it comes to K-pop, we want to make K-pop our own. What I want our audience to take away from watching our performance is the feeling of being lost within yourself. You need to go through that to be able to feel the opposite. I'm Deana Lado, and this is my neighbourhood. (UPLIFTING MUSIC) (REFLECTIVE MUSIC) Albert Park is one of my favourite places to go here in east of Queen St. I hang out with my friends here. We have picnics, hang out, soak up the sun. The gardens were laid out in the 1880s. Long before that, it was a pa site for the tangata whenua. My father's Sudanese and my mother's Egyptian-Turk. Growing up, we had a mix of Arabic, African and New Zealand. My father's Catholic, and my mum's Muslim. I find it really hard to explain it to people, but growing up, it was just fine for my family. I love embracing all the beautiful traditions that are my birthright. (REFLECTIVE MUSIC) When I think of myself ethnically, I would say Eurasian. So mixture of European and Asian. Some people don't realise as well that there's a lot of Spanish mixed in with the Philippines, so it's Hispanic as well. I was born in London, south-east England, and I came to New Zealand about four years ago. My mum has a travel bug, so from a young age we were travelling all over the world and we were lucky enough to visit the Philippines many, many times. So every time I go there, I have really good memories and true appreciation of the culture and the hospitality of the people there in the Philippines, so it's very close to me. I started dancing at a very young age. I went the classical route doing some tap, ballet, jazz. And then when I got to the age of about 14 or 15, I was scouted at one of the popular studios in London called Pineapple Studios. When I was 15, I had my first UK tour. So at a very young age, I'm trying to juggle schoolwork as well as performing professionally. I've been lucky enough to dance with people including Mariah Carey, and that was kind of the peak of my career. I felt like I'd really achieved one of my goals when I did this, and this was back in London. So as I travel from country to country, I learn about the different cultures, what's acceptable, different laws, different religions. When I landed here in New Zealand, I thought, 'What's the best way of` 'What's the best platform that I could use or create to explore this?' And a charity model was the best way. And initially it was through dance, which is a very popular activity, but it's also a way for me to create smaller projects that create awareness for different issues. So it could be depression, it could be cancer, it could be asthma, it could be teaching English to those maybe who can't afford it or who want to strengthen their skills. Anything. It's across the board. Well, for me, because DreamCatchers doesn't just represent dance, we represent education, sport, well-being, mindfulness and dance. So I always try to remind them that school is just as important as any of the extra curricular activities. (CURIOUS MUSIC) Cooking and dance ` two of my biggest passions. They have structure. You do need some training, (LAUGHS) and it's just all about practice makes perfect, so, yes, in that sense, cooking is like dance. I learnt to cook pancit from watching over my mum's shoulder in London. She didn't really like me getting very in the kitchen. (LAUGHS) Afraid I was probably going to blow something up. I have a very strong passion towards food. Whoo! The onions are just... I have a very strong passion with food, so I'm always intrigued how things are made, where they come from and the back story to it. So it was always interesting watching my mum make it, and then obviously my aunt or other family members preparing for a big family gathering or party, so, yeah. Watching and learning. (FUNKY MUSIC) And now I'm gonna add some chilli ` just a small teaspoon ` because I like a little bit of spice. As I've travelled, especially to places like Malaysia, Singapore, I've always kind of liked a little bit of heat. So even though in the Philippines, they don't really have spicy, spicy dishes like Indian spice, I kind of add that just to mix it up. Jasmine's little version. I first tasted pancit probably when I was 5 years old. Pancit is one of those staple Filipino dishes that you have at every party and every family gathering, so, yeah. I've had it quite a lot of times. (LAUGHS) (UPBEAT MUSIC) Today I've invited a family that's really close to me, called the Lightband family. I met them a few years ago, and since then we've kicked it off as friends. They went from being professional to being family, and now it's just a group people that are really supportive of everything that I do. So I've invited them to taste the pancit and hopefully, they'll like it. I love, like,... various flavours in one thing and this just tops it off. It tastes so good. Jasmine's just` She's one of those people that have got this positive vibe all the time, and she's always wanting to help others. And she's always wanting to teach them so many different things in life. Being hospitable and sharing and sociable is really deep in Filipino culture, and I think it's maybe because it's a Third World country. Education and even just being part of something like performing arts is kind of like a gateway or pathway to a better life. Whatever you do have, they feel it's important that you share it, and that's integral with food. (REFLECTIVE MUSIC) The Governor of New Zealand lived in this building until 1865, when the government was moved to Wellington. It still feels very much like old England. There's even an oak tree that was supposedly grown from an acorn that was brought from the great forests at Windsor. At school, I got picked on for my skin colour. At one point it got so bad that I would bleach my face to try and lighten my skin. It took years before I learnt that I didn't need to meet society's expectation. The things that hurt us when we're young can take a long time to put behind us. (REFLECTIVE MUSIC) I was born in Pakistan. About 13 or 14 years ago, my father decided to bring us over here because he was thinking that we are grown-up girls now, and we needed a man to protect us. (CHUCKLES) So we did not have any say in coming to New Zealand. If we did, I wouldn't have. Back then, I did not want to leave my mum. But, yeah, it was his decision and so we came here. It was devastating leaving our mum, because with our mum, we slept in the same room, we were a family, and then suddenly four of us were coming over here, leaving behind two younger siblings, going with a person who we hardly knew. When we came with him over here, he was` he was OK in the beginning. But then because he had never lived with the kids and we had never lived with him, it was just a bit difficult. And then he started` he was verbally abusive, and then physically abusive as well. He started hitting us, and there was a lot of mental torture. 'You're not allowed to make friends at high school.' Eventually, we decided to leave him. Somehow we linked up with Shakti and we lived in the safe house for a couple of weeks. I got the guardianship of three of my younger sisters, and then,... yeah, we finished our high school, then we started with our uni. And then since then, I haven't seen him. It impacted all of us equally, and then, I guess, we all were very, very depressed. Couple of years after we left him, I did attempt suicide, um,... a couple of times, actually, because I was trying to deal with the whole situation, but I wasn't able to. And because of my whole history dealing with... um, dealing with depression, and also the suicidal ideation and suicidal attempts, I've become a very strong advocate around the mental health issues. This is my short film Parallel Worlds. So my sister and I, we made this when we were very depressed and extremely suicidal as well. So this is a story of a brother and a sister who are going through a very hard time and then the brother kills himself, and then when the sister decides to kill herself as well, the brother comes back and tells her that it's not worth it. So we launched it at the University of Auckland in an evening session, and we invited a psychologist, a counsellor, a sociologist, and we talked about depression and suicide and... we received a very good response from people, and then we put it up on YouTube. (RELAXING MUSIC) It's much more harder for the migrant communities because the first thing is that they're coming into a new culture over here, but at the same time, because it's hard back in our countries to talk about mental health, so they kind of bring the same ideology over here and they do not really` I mean, we do not talk about it. So my sister and I, we've started this website. It's called 'Your Fight is Over'. We are creating a platform for people to share their stories. It could be about anything and how do they cope with it. So when other people see the same stories, when other people like` anyone who's going through a tough time or they're suffering, when they look at the website and they see that this person is a real person and they've gone through these things and this is how they felt, so maybe they will not feel isolated and alone the way I felt. What we didn't realise that was once the website is live and we have so many friends who are keen to submit stories and stuff, how are we going to lay it out? So we're just figuring that out, cos there would be a lot of text, there would be a lot of submissions. It's a good problem, yes. (BOTH LAUGH) It means that people are wanting to send in submissions. So far, our website has been live since yesterday afternoon,... Yeah. ...and you've got three submissions already. Already. So that's pretty good. Yes. I think it's just building connections. We want people to build connections with this website. My long-term dream is that wherever I am, the people around me feel safe enough to talk about their experiences. They don't feel isolated, they don't feel that they are judged by other people, they don't feel that if they are going through a problem, it's their burden or it's their shame. They shouldn't be feeling guilty. So that is my long-term goal, other than taking over the whole world. (LAUGHS) (RELAXING MUSIC) I love living where I do ` close enough to the action on Queen St but far enough to be able to sleep at night. These two images are my most prized, treasured photos. One of my sitto which means grandma in Arabic, and of my late brother Daniel, who passed. Having these photos makes me feel like they're actually really close, they're still around, kind of thing. It's amazing to me how much emotion a picture can trigger when the subject's so close to your heart. Sensory work tries to engage all the senses at the same time. There's touch, there's sound, there's sight. This is the Tricky Box Eight. It's a part of our Tricky Box series of experiential art installations. What the box has is, actually, it's got your past, it's got your present and it's got your future in it. So normally these are open, and you come in and you have to spin it. And it says who were you in your last life. The idea was born out of a little childhood memory from India. We used to get this guy who used to come down around fairs. He was called the bioscopewala. And what he did was he had this tin box, and he used to have these things too. He used to have these things in it. And as kids, we would just run, wanting to just watch what was inside the box. So everybody has their own interpretations, of course. When they come in, they might engage with one particular bit of their life, like we had this lady who was looking in it, and she had tears in her eyes, and we thought, 'Oh, it was supposed to be an entertainment piece. What happened?' All she was looking at was who you were in your past life was a flower. And she had just recently lost her mother, who was a keen gardener, so she kind of related to it in a completely different way. (SKYPE CALL RINGS) Hi! Hi. Hello. Yeah. Can you hear us now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Better. Did you get the copy I sent you? Yeah. Absolutely fine. I think we'll be able to finish something by evening today, my time. I can collaborate with Prabhjot. He is my art partner from 17 years ago from during my advertising days. And, yes, we create most of our works together, and they're not limited by media, so we've done acrylic on canvas, we've done sculptures, multimedia installations, film. You'll have to get up very early every day to practise on that. (LAUGHS) You got to start doing this every day. (PLAYS BANSURI) (RELAXING MUSIC) Frame Works is an exhibition that has been done for the Asylum Seekers Support Trust. I'm one of the artists taking part in it. What happened was they have these frames that they've given to about 90 of us to create anything we want, where the topic explored people's having to seek asylum in the current political scenario. While the works will be auctioned online, they can be viewed as part of a trail which is covering Auckland CBD. I think it goes up from Britomart right on to Queen St. This one here is by Basia Smolnicki. Her mother was one of the Pahiatua Polish orphans that came here ` the first group of refugees that came to New Zealand. She's got quite a connection with that whole refugee community because of that. This work here is called May the Spring Bloom Beneath Your Feet. And when we were given our framework, it was a static framework, and we thought this thing was about the journey that you make out of the framework into another one. What we have here is somebody who's trying to jump the border to get on to the other side. And the work is like a prayer and a wish for him. So it says, 'May the spring bloom beneath your feet.' What I find about New Zealand is that it's fresh. It's a fresh country. It's still in the making. And voices are being added to it every day. It can still define itself. And we have the ability, I think, to evolve. That's quite a nice thing. It's quite a feeling of freedom, I think. (RELAXING MUSIC) If I had been raised in Sudan or in Egypt, I wouldn't be the person that I am today. I'd be too worried about speaking my mind, and I probably would've been married off at a young age. One thing that I believe, is that it's important to do something nice for someone each day. Maybe greet a stranger on your way to work or crack a smile. We human beings all need to be seen and appreciated, no matter where we come from or what our circumstances are. (RELAXED MUSIC) I went to a dominantly Pacific Islander school. Liking something different than everyone else was like a no-no. So I had to hide my love for K-pop for about seven years. And, like, even my mum didn't know about it. When I was younger, we were told we were not allowed to dance, since I grew up Seventh-Day Adventist. For me, growing up, I just always had the mindset I wasn't allowed to dance. But when I got into K-pop, that's when I really, really got into dance. So K-pop is popular music in South Korea. There's a mixture of boy groups and girl groups with the one or two co-ed groups. And they have` there's a plethora (LAUGHS) of dance styles, music styles that is in K-pop, which creates K-pop. When I was 11 years old, that's when I first discovered K-pop. It was at my Korean friend's house. Her mum played music, and I was like, 'What is this music? What is this?' And she goes, 'It's K-pop.' And, yeah, that's the end of it. (LAUGHS) I am a student. I study at AUT. I study education. My father's side is from the Cook Islands, from Aitutaki. And then my mum's dad's dad, he's from America. He migrated to the Cook Islands. I am the co-president of the Horizon ADP, which is the AUT dance and performance club. We run a dance club at AUT. Our slogan is, 'Together we rise.' Just like the sunset, how it goes over the horizon. (FUNKY MUSIC) There's many, many cultures in my dance group. So we're very diverse. And what brings us together is K-pop and our love for dance. We are at the AUT dance studio and we are rehearsing for East Meets West event on Friday. Got two days. So this is my dance... um, some of them. And my co-president is just behind you. Come here. Come here. My co-president. Back to you. (LAUGHS) This is Kavya, and this is Susan and this is Xyrene, our vice-president. And the story of the... It's her story that we are performing. (AMBIENT MUSIC) I was born in the Philippines and then I moved here in New Zealand, and then at first, I wasn't really good at English. I couldn't really talk to anyone, cos all I could say is yes or no. And then I learnt a lot about dance. It was fun, cos in the Philippines I didn't really learn about other people's traditions, cos it's just my tradition there. (AMBIENT MUSIC) When it comes to K-pop, we wanna make K-pop our own. What I want the audience to take away from watching our performance is the feeling of being lost within yourself. You need to go through that to be able to feel the opposite. (FUNKY MUSIC) The event that we're holding is called East Meets West: Bridging Cultures Through Music and Dance. So effectively it's one of our many diversity events that we organise for students, to encourage students to participate and engage with campus life. But most of all it's an event where we want to provide opportunities for our students from diverse backgrounds to connect with each other, interact and learn about each other's cultures. Come on, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ` Fusion Dance! (PULSATING, FUNKY MUSIC) I guess for me, dancing has probably... given me the opportunity to meet a lot of new people. And since through dance I get to meet a lot of people, I can relate to... not necessarily relate, but I can talk to people about certain things that I know that they may have gone through, or if not, that's the stereotype of their culture. But since I know that they are more than their stereotype, I wanna go past that. And that's one thing I feel that a lot of people... want to be. Like, they want to be known as more than just a stereotype. (REFLECTIVE MUSIC) When my family arrived over two decades ago, there was a lack of diversity. But now Auckland's like a mini London or a little New York. There's different cultures everywhere. But it's not a perfect blend yet, though. I hope one day people will actually be able to get along and put aside their cultural and their religious differences. I look forward to Diwali and Chinese New Year becoming national public holidays for all citizens to enjoy, like Easter is today. As I look around me in east of Queen, I realise that we are getting there. Captions by Starsha Samarasinghe. Edited by Ingrid Lauder. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017