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”.