Mind your Artist

When French speaking Renate Verbrugge (well known Taranaki artist and stone sculptor) offered to become a translator/artist minder at WOMAD New Zealand for musician Julien Jacob back in 2003, little did she realise the fun and challenges that were ahead of her. “I ended up spending everyday with Julien and his band while they were in the New Zealand, I took them to the beach, up Mt Taranaki, and then out for a few drinks.”

Renate has learnt in the many years she has been an artist minder that the most important role is making sure the artists get to and from their performances and on time, however Renate believes there is a whole lot more to it as she explains: “For me its a lot more, I see myself as one of the many faces of WOMAD New Zealand and an ambassador of our beautiful country”.

All the challenges that Renate has faced as an artist minder and translator seem to be balanced with what she describes as “beautiful moments”. She shares stories of both: “Some artists I have looked after are real superstars in their home country so of course they expected the superstar treatment here as well, but once they got use to the laid back attitude of the locals they relaxed and enjoyed the festival and their time in New Zealand immensely.  I have also dealt with some real bad boy musicians and it was always a real effort to get them to their stage on time. All hell broke loose when the bad boy band had realized that their manager had ticked the no alcohol box for their back stage requests, however the wonderful backstage WOMAD crew sorted it all out very quickly”. The beautiful moments that

Renate also treasures is forming special relationships with some of the artists she minds at WOMAD, some of those relationships last for years. Two of them are JulienJacob from the 2003 WOMAD and another is a friendship formed was with the drummer from Zap Mama from WOMAD 2005, who happens to live very close to her home town in Belgium and with whom she still spends a lot of time with when she is visiting family”.

Behind the WOMAD curtain

Happy New Year!

Chris Herlihy is one of the experienced team members working for WOMAD NZ again this year, and is hard at work with the rest of the team putting together an amazing world class festival for New Zealand to enjoy. Chris takes on three job roles throughout the year and the months leading up to the WOMAD festival.

Before the festival Chris’s roles are both Business and Logistics Manager. As the Business Manager Chris lets me in on some of the sorts of things he does leading up to the big weekend. “Organizing flights for all artists, booking accommodation for these artists while they are in New Zealand, also a large part is liaising with WOMAD Australia as they to have huge ties with the international acts that come to WOMAD NZ”. Chris tells me that there are 400 artists at this year’s WOMAD and he has booked over 200 hotel rooms. Another interesting job that Chris has organized is accommodation at a local marae for 100 of the performing artists who have requested to stay there.

As soon as WOMAD weekend hits Chris changes it up and becomes  Site Operations Manager, which means he is out and about onsite at the festival overseeing  technical elements such as coordinating gates and entrances into the festival, security, the information centre and St Johns (first aid medical care).

“Giving the best platform to the performers” is very important to Chris and the WOMAD team, this is so they are feeling happy to perform and have a positive view of the WOMAD festival and New Zealand.  One of the platforms and traditions that the artists receive when they arrive in New Zealand is a formal powhiri, which this year will be held at Owae Marae in Waitara. This event is Chris’s favorite part of the job as he describes it as a very spiritual and moving time for both him and the artists. Chris remembers how moved one artist was at last year’s powhiri. “A member from Hypnotic Brass Ensemble (New York, USA based band) turned to me and said I am blown away by this experience and my children and grandchildren will know of this moment”.