Te Wāhi Toi/The Arts Place exists to connect the creative community of Queenstown and Wānaka with audiences, students, teachers, spaces and each other. We are a not-for-profit organisation powered by Three Lakes Cultural Trust and inspired by local arts and culture.
FAQs and
Resources
Everything you need to know about joining the Te Wāhi Toi community. Need help using the directory? Ready to add a listing or promote an event or venue? Have a read through our FAQs first.
Here to help
Te Wāhi Toi is a place where all are welcome. Whether you are a part-timer, professional, local business or hobbyist, we’d love to see you on our creative directory. If you’ve got a question about how to add a listing or if you’re not sure where to list your creative skill you should find the answer here in the FAQs. Our FAQs also cover helpful information on how to create a Te Wāhi Toi login and personalise your feed. If you can’t find what you’re looking for in our FAQs then head to our contact page to get in touch.
ALL
Let us know about any website issues by emailing [email protected].
We appreciate your help to make Te Wāhi Toi a powerful resource for our community.
Contributors
Nothing! Listing your profile, creative space or event on Te Wāhi Toi is completely free thanks to our incredible supporters.
There are plenty of reasons to join our creative directory, here are just a few.
Te Wāhi Toi’s most important goal is to be inclusive. We welcome those from every aspect of the arts and cultural community in and around Queenstown and Wānaka. We wholeheartedly invite you to contribute if you are an individual, or represent a community group or business that is involved in our district’s vibrant arts and culture scene via:
Art Object
Design
Music
Performing Arts
Photography / Film
Visual Arts
Written / Spoken
We encourage you to join the community whether you are a professional, part-timer, business, hobbyist or complete beginner.
For the Creative Directory, contributors will need:
We want you! Please contact us if you’d like to participate but need some support to collate these files
Although not compulsory, these additional items will help to give your listing maximum exposure:
For Event listings, contributors will need:
For Find a space listings, contributors will need:
It only takes a few minutes to sign up, then you’ll need to complete a listing. How long it takes to complete your listing will depend on whether or not you have your images and copy ready to go. Here’s the process:
Here are a few tips to make your creative listing stand out:
1. Use High-Quality Images.
You're putting your work on display to showcase its quality, so make sure your images accurately represent your offerings. A professional photographer is recommended, but if that is not an option, use the best camera can you can your hands on. Make sure that your work is well-framed, and the photo is taken straight on and in natural light.
2. Write a strong bio.
Write your bio as if you were explaining you qualifications, passion and work to a friend. Highlight your strengths, list any achievements, and explain exactly what it is you're interested in and can offer. Make sure your spelling and grammar is correct, too!
3. Fill out as many details as possible.
A fleshed out profile makes it easy for people to find you, your work, and what you have to offer. Make sure to include as many details as possible - don't do just the bare minimum.
For more tips, you can check out this article on how to create a strong artist profile.
Te Wāhi Toi’s search functionality is designed to help users find specific results or simply have a browse of what’s on offer. It does this by offering broad categories as well as more refined tags. The broad categories help users explore and discover general areas of arts and culture, and ensure no zero results are returned.
Within these broad categories, users can also refine their search by selecting a tag or typing a keyword. This helps users find specific disciplines.
For example, Visual Arts is a category, and Sculpture is a tag that sits within Visual Arts. A user might also type “sculptor” into the keyword search so it’s important to make sure that you’ve referenced this in your listing copy.
We recommend you find a category that is as close as possible to your field. A curator checks all listings before they are published on the directory and will spot anything that may not look right.
If you can’t find anything to fit your field of creative work, please email the Te Wāhi Toi curator.
Art Object >
Ceramics & Glass, Furniture, Jewellery, Textiles & Weaving, Kā Toi Māori and more.
Design >
Animation, Architecture, Fashion, Graphic, Kā Toi Māori and more.
Music >
Classical, Contemporary, Jazz, Kā Toi Māori and more.
Performing Arts >
Acrobatics, Comedy, Dance, Theatre/Drama, Kā Toi Māori and more.
Photography / Film >
Art, Commercial, Photography, Videography, Kā Toi Māori and more.
Visual Arts >
Fine Art, Illustration, Mixed-media, Painting, Print Making, Public Art, Sculpture, Kā Toi Māori and more.
Written / Spoken >
Academic, Fiction, Non Fiction, Poetry, Kā Toi Māori and more.
We recommend you find a category that is as close as possible to your field. A curator checks all listings before they are published on the directory and will spot anything that may not look right.
If you can’t find anything to fit your field of creative work, please email the Te Wāhi Toi curator.
Business >
Services, suppliers, galleries, education institutions
Groups >
Bands, collectives, clubs, societies, not for profit organisations
People >
Individuals
We recommend you select a category that fits as closely as possible. A curator checks all listings before they are published on the directory and will spot anything that may not look right.
If you can’t find anything to fit, please email the Te Wāhi Toi curator.
There are some parts of your Te Wāhi Toi profile that are compulsory, like Listing Title and an email address. However most sections are non-compulsory and if you don’t enter information for that question, the section won’t appear on your profile. However, we recommend a full and up to date profile is the best way to promote yourself!
Click the three dot menu on your listing in the My Listing page to add a notice on your event listing. This will appear in an announcement bar across the top of the hero image, separate to the rest of the listing details.
This function works well for notices like “Buy your ticket now!”, “Seats are nearly sold out!!”. All edits, including notices, need to be submitted and approved by the curator before they are published.
If you’re creating several similar listings you can shortcut the inputting step.
Find a listing on your My Listings page you wish to use as a base. Click the three dot menu (top right) and select Duplicate. A draft listing is created with all content pre-filled as per the original listing. Edit each section as needed and submit it for approval.
Yes! Help us to maximise our search engine optimisation by including your personal, business or group’s name in your Creative Directory listing title. Your listing title should be the most obvious phrase people will use to look for you in Google.
Some good listing title examples are:
Bloggs & Daughters - Trapeze artists
Joe Bloggs: Sculptor
Cello lessons with Joe Bloggs
We recommend keeping your listing title to 70 characters or less to make it easy to read and easy for search engine results.
Absolutely. There is a check box in the listing creation flow that will allow you to choose “Online” as the event location. We also recommend you include the word online in your listing title so it’s very obvious, for example, “Online event: Wānaka Ukulele Orchestra Performance”.
The categories for 'Find A Space' are really broad. We expect creatives to do a keyword search to find the specifics they are after so make sure all features are included in the listing copy. You could include a bullet point list at the end of your listing. For example, a dance space might include:
Te Wāhi Toi
Pronunciation: Teah Waa-he Toy
Translation: The Arts Place
One of the Three Lakes Cultural Trust’s strategic objectives is to ensure the rich historical cultural fabric of the district - the legacies of Kāi Tahu and of subsequent settlers - is supported, celebrated and promoted.
We have endeavoured to use correct te reo Māori including the following place names:
Within our tags we have utilised Creative NZ’s definition of Ngā toi Māori (Māori arts) which “include, but are not limited to, Māori heritage arts practice such as: taonga puoro, tārai waka, kaupapa waka, whakairo, rāranga, tāniko, kākahu, tukutuku, kōwhaiwhai, tā moko, kapa haka, mōteatea, waiata ā-ringa, waiata tawhito, poi, waiata haka, pao, mau rākau, whaikōrero, karanga, whakapapa recitation, te reo me onā tikanga, whakairo, kōrero paki, pakiwaitara, karetao, whare tapere and whakaraka. It also includes the work of Māori artists across all forms of contemporary arts practice."
We use 'k' instead of 'ng' because the Kai Tahu dialect from southern Te Wai Pounamu substitutes 'k' for 'ng'. For example:
Here’s a great article that shows how you can easily set up your computer keyboard to type macrons.
A good tool for extending your te reo Māori knowledge is the Māori/ English English/Māori dictionary website, Te Aka.
We welcome submissions from our community! Please email the curator to express your interest.
Portal Users
Art Object >
Ceramics & Glass, Furniture, Jewellery, Textiles & Weaving, Kā Toi Māori and more.
Design >
Animation, Architecture, Fashion, Graphic, Kā Toi Māori and more.
Music >
Classical, Contemporary, Jazz, Kā Toi Māori and more.
Performing Arts >
Acrobatics, Comedy, Dance, Theatre/Drama, Kā Toi Māori and more.
Photography / Film >
Art, Commercial, Photography, Videography, Kā Toi Māori and more.
Visual Arts >
Fine Art, Illustration, Mixed-media, Painting, Print Making, Public Art, Sculpture, Kā Toi Māori and more.
Written / Spoken >
Academic, Fiction, Non Fiction, Poetry, Kā Toi Māori and more.
You can expand or decrease the range of new or updated events and listings you see in your personalised feed by going to Account Settings and updating your interests.
You can choose how frequently you receive emails, and which email address emails go to by updating your preferences in Account Settings.
KEY PARTNERS
KEY PARTNERS
