1 'NEIGHBOURHOOD' THEME Captions by Madison Batten. Edited by Ingrid Lauder. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016 UPBEAT MUSIC Parnell Rd ` 20 or 30 years ago, this was the place to be seen for shopping, champagne and general '80s excess. These days the strip has lost its crown to Ponsonby ` for now, anyway. UPBEAT MUSIC CONTINUES But a dip in financial fortunes has opened up opportunities for an increasingly diverse population to set up shop here, with up to a third of locals coming from overseas. My family moved here from Moscow after the collapse of communism. And Parnell was the first place we made our home. So this time on Neighbourhood, we're going to explore Parnell Rd in all its multicultural glory. We'll savour some of the intricacies of Iranian cuisine. Saffron is` I think is the most expensive spice in the world. Recently we paid, uh, NZ$6000 for a kg of saffron. A young artist traces the influence of Chinese calligraphy in his work. Chinese painting, there's a right and a wrong way of doing a brushstroke, you see. So if you do one brushstroke wrong, people can tell a mile away that you didn't have enough strength as you went around that corner. An Italian woman shares her passion for preserving the beautiful things in life. I'm a fighter here. Like, we don't have much heritage in NZ. We have to fight to save it. And a woman from South Africa shares her vision for the blind community. How can we make our services more accessible to disabled people? How can we be more` do more community engagement to see what people want? Deaf people, blind people, those with mobility impairments. I'm Irina Kapeli, and this is my neighbourhood. 'NEIGHBOURHOOD' THEME REFLECTIVE MUSIC I was born at the start of the collapse of communism. We lived through violence, food shortages, Mafia wars and months where people simply didn't get paid. And everything was in short supply. I remember one time, in winter, 10 below, Mum and I joined a line with no idea what we were queuing for. And an hour later, we found out it was matches, which were precious, because if you ran out of matches, there was no way to light a gas stove. Frozen hands and feet ` and it's getting dark ` we get to the head of the line, and the man in front of us gets the last two boxes. So ever since then, I have to have matches or a lighter in the house, even though my stove here is electric. I guess there's always something like this we carry with us from childhood. SLOW, FUNKY MUSIC In Italy, I loved art. And I was very young, at 13 years old, when I decided art was something that I really liked to work on and to study. And in Italy, you can be lucky enough, if you have a clear idea at a young age, you can actually access to what we call 'lyceum'. And so I did an artistic lyceum, so where you have, every day, six hours of drawing. I studied a school of conservation in the heart of Florence, um,... in Santa Croce district. I'm working on an object that, actually, I made a long time ago, when I was at the school in Florence, and, um` the school of conservation. The best way to learn from theory is to do the practical work. So that the teacher will invite you to create something. So I started at the design, so it was just a piece of wood. Um, and then I designed, and then I carved. My business is in Parnell, called Studio Carolina Izzo. Art and heritage conservation. We work from paintings to ceramics, wooden sculpture and building. I've been very lucky to be in Parnell, especially surrounded by so many art galleries. And so we started to have a lovely relationship with galleries around here. It is just a beautiful environment ` being invited to the openings and having people just buy the painting, and come to here to see what they can` what we can provide for them. CALM MUSIC When I came here to NZ, the feeling was, like, what can I take (CHUCKLES) I will miss, you know? Everything has been taken from Italy to here, so I took everything. Like, I had the biggest container you can get. It was full of Italian objects. So this is the toilette that I bought when I was in Florence as a student. I bought it from my maestro, actually, and it was all quite, uh, ruined. Um, but I felt so enthusiastic about the fact that I can buy my own furniture ` I was only 21. It's the furniture that normally women used to have in their own bedroom. And you can put a lid up, and the mirror inside, and have all the little things for, um` for the make-up. And the other thing why I love and I really care a lot about this furniture is because we've managed, with my dad, and we French polished the furniture together. It was good fun, yes. Um, it brings a lot of nice memories. I learned, obviously, a lot. He gave me all the secrets to make a beautiful French polish. And I feel very proud. It's a very interesting process. You have to polish the day before, so then you varnish again. It's like a` a process that you can't do in one day. CALM MUSIC I had this privilege to be part of the gilding project of Holy Trinity Cathedral in Parnell. It's not the type of job that you can say` you can say, 'I'm not going to work today.' You have to, as a team, work in a team there and, yes, we are quite committed. And hopefully, in four weeks we finish. CALM MUSIC CONTINUES The project is gilding 370m2 of ceiling with three different types of gold leaf, 86mm beside, in a random way. I like to be a contribution to people, to community ` wherever I am. In NZ, in the past, I heard things like, 'We can't do it, because we don't have the money.' Especially in heritage. I'm a fighter here. Like, we don't have much heritage in NZ. We have to fight to save it. And, um, so... we have extremely good people, between conservators, architects, craftsmen, we have everything we need. It's just we needed to shift the mentality, that, actually, we can save heritage in NZ. UPLIFTING MUSIC I will always remember the first time we arrived at Parnell. My mum looking at the hill and saying, 'How are we ever going to walk up here in winter when it's covered in ice?' But of course that never happened. A real estate agent had found us a beautiful house here, with heated floors and a swimming pool, and told us we were paying the average rent that we should expect to pay in NZ. Of course, we were paying way more. For a long time, my parents struggled to find work here. They both had amazing jobs back in Russia, but here ended up settling for a cleaner and a kitchen hand. And it is a very scary experience to watch your life's savings bleed out. And unfortunately, it drove them apart in the end. On the positive side, our neighbours were incredibly kind. Some helped us find work and some donated furniture or clothes. The help we received was amazing. Sometimes, the support of the community makes all the difference. I was diagnosed with my blindness when I was 6 months old. I had a great childhood. I was born in Namibia and then moved to South Africa when I was a year and a half old, because when I was diagnosed as blind, those were the days when the doctors gave you a prognosis and it was sort of the` having a disability was the end of the world. So it was like, 'Well, she's got a vision condition. The prognosis is bad. 'She's not going to get her sight back, or get sight, um, restored. 'She will need to go to a special school for the blind, which is in South Africa.' I had my personal peer support around me, because everybody else were blind or vision impaired. So, I` yeah, I had a great childhood. (LAUGHS) GENTLE MUSIC Right now we're at the outside of the Blind Foundation. There's the old Jubilee Building site, the historic site, and, of course, there's the new building. This is where the Blind Foundation used to be way back in the 1800s and up to now. This is also the agency that helped me to get Weston and helped me with items such as computer training and distribute talking books to me. In the mid '90s, my sister and her husband were recruited to come and work here. I was the only family member left from our small unit, really, and I've just completed my university studies. I struggled to find a job in the area that I got qualifications for. And I thought, 'Look, I can` It's as good a time as any to explore coming.' CALM MUSIC Not too long after I moved to NZ, I joined some blind sports clubs in Auckland. And I met Gary at the Auckland Blind Sports and Recreation Club. We played blind cricket and goal ball. Oh, he was there for the cricket and I was for the drinks. (LAUGHS) My role at the moment is, um, I'm a specialist adviser at Auckland Council. I'm the key contact and disability portfolio holder, and, um, so most of the aspects to do with how can we make our services more accessible to disabled people? How can we be more` do more community engagement to see what people want? Deaf people, blind people, those with mobility impairments. CHEERFUL MUSIC I travel mostly for almost a secondary job that I'm doing. I've been asked by the World Blind Union to be their strategic lead on access to the environment and transport. You know, many people go on trips where they` you know, there's a lot of temples and things, whereas I think sometimes it's just finding something that is` that is more tactile, like, um, visit a real Mongolian ger. And then, of course, buying one that's made of, um, the skin and the felt, that you know that you've got a bit of a replica of a house they were in. Or, you know, and something with a lot of history, like the, um, masu, the Japanese drinking vessels from way back, where they had` I mean, they're just so` I mean, they've got modern sake glasses too, but these ones are so nice and old when they tell you the story of` in the days of poverty and war, where they had the sake inside and the salt on the top so you sort of, uh, had your drinking and eating vessel at the same time. CALM MUSIC Here we are at Elliot St. It is one of our Central Business District shared spaces that we've developed. So we created what was called a 'tactile delineator' and` made up of stones. People sometimes` it might be made out of concrete. And you can actually make it quite nice, have quite nice kind of stone. It's meant to be a tactile indicator for the people to feel with their cane or their feet or their shoes, to feel that they're actually` This is telling you that if you're gonna carry on from here on, cars might be there as well. We promote this throughout the rest of the country and even internationally. I've been presenting in international forums on safe design and inclusive shared spaces. I've got so many goals still. I'd really love to promote accessibility and inclusive services more, whether it's locally here in Parnell or in Auckland or across NZ or across the world, and just, you know, trying to get society more equitable and build the awareness of what's around. CALM MUSIC We learned some English in Russia, but it was only when we got here we realised how little we really knew. And the local accent was really really hard. So I used to come here to this library after school and read anything I could to try and expand my vocabulary. One of my fondest memories of Russia is the New Year's Eve at my grandmother's place. The whole room would be filled with tables, all pushed together, and the family would eat, drink lots of vodka and talk for hours and hours. And no matter how tough things were during the year, for that one night we would always have plenty of food. CURIOUS MUSIC I had a great childhood. Born in Tehran. Rise up in a family coming from a hospitality background. Mum and Dad both working, so... Uh, there was a war between` when I was born, there was a war between Iran and Iraq, but we still had happiness, so, yeah, great memories from childhood. My father, he's a chef, and he's a butcher, so he has a restaurant back home in Iran. I came to NZ in 2006 and fell in love with this country, with the Kiwis, and one of the reasons that we opened a restaurant here, that was my dad's idea. He was a bit bored here after three months not doing anything at home, and he decided to open a restaurant. UPBEAT MUSIC Our restaurant's called Rumi, on Parnell Rd. Hi, everyone, and welcome to Rumi. Here you go. Yeah, it's a nice place to live and a good neighbourhood. And lots of art gallery, so we love to live in the area. Rumi is an Iranian poet. Because my dad, he loves his Rumi philosophy of living, which is living for the moment that you are in, so enjoy your life. UPLIFTING MUSIC We cook zereshk polo today. It's a Persian` one of the Persian traditional dishes that we have in all Persian houses. So, we need to chop the onion, capsicum, fry, and we just add the spices and the chicken later to it. I learned from, uh, Mum and Dad, both of them. Yeah, we always cook at home. I always watch them. And most of the time I ask them what they do, how they do, so that's how I learned, uh, cooking. So, from now, I'm just going to ask my mum to come and help me. (SPEAKS PERSIAN) Kiwi and Persian cooking ` I would say their main maybe difference would be just, uh, less spices in Kiwi kitchen. These are barberries. It's a soury taste, um, berries from the berry family. But we caramelise with sugar, rose water, and we mix it with pistachios, almonds and saffron. And we just, uh, put it on top of the rice. That's called zereshk polo. 'Polo' is rice and 'zereshk' is the barberries. That's why we call the dish zereshk polo. Yeah. Saffron is, uh` I think is the most expensive spice in the world. Recently we paid NZ$6000 for a kg of saffron. I have two of my good friends coming tonight ` Farzin and Mehdi. And I hope they enjoy the zereshk polo. AMBIENT ELECTRONICA MUSIC Lots of people that I've met, they don't know much about Iran. They know Iran is a very conservative country. And they think that Iranian people, they cannot do partying, or they're all the time sad, and there's no happiness there. And I always say, 'No, it's not the things you see in the media.' We are socialising, we do party. Uh, we have happiness back home in Iran. OK, people living in Iran, they have some difficulties, but it's not that's all. I guess we can call it, um, 'jewelled rice' as well, because of, um` because jewellery is expensive, and it's very colourful. So the ingredients that are used in this dish are expensive as well, like, for example, saffron, which is almost the same price as gold, I would say. Hospitality is, uh` is in our culture. We always welcome foreign people to our family, to our home. That's what we have and we are proud of it, so... And we will show that to all other nations. WIND CHIMES JINGLE White Night is just one of the community events that really brings Parnell Rd alive. There are dozens of art installations to enjoy up and down the strip. My mum always wanted a creative career, but it simply wasn't possible for her back in Russia. She grew up in a communal flat with seven other families, where each family had a room of their own and there was only one bathroom, one shower, and three stoves between 30 people. So the need to get a proper job was all-consuming. So one of the things my mum loved about NZ is that she could encourage me to be creative. There is no way that back in Russia I could have trained as a dancer or built a career in arts. And I'm surely not the only person who gets inspired by what happens when you bring two cultures together. INTRIGUING MUSIC When I was 18, like, to actually meet up with a calligrapher and actually learn painting off him, I came with a portfolio and, you know, he took one look at my work and he was like, 'No.' Like, you know, 'This is, you know, a bit stiff in the hands, 'and I don't think this would be very good if you actually learnt calligraphy painting with me, 'and it's sort of like a, well, uh` sort of like a waste of time, you know, just to put it` to be frank.' And then, you know, that sort of left me heartbroken for a while, you know. But then, you know, being stubborn me, you know, I actually went up to him and asked if I could have some paper and just, like, test out the thing. I didn't do a good job with the rice paper. But then, showing that I had the heart, he decided to continue to teach me, which was quite cool. My calligraphy painting teacher, um, gave me, um, certain brushstrokes. And what we'll do is, like, um, we'll do the same brushstroke over and over again until we've captured the spirit of the brushstroke and the angles of the brushstroke. Chinese painting, the way that they do it is that there's a right and a wrong way of doing a brushstroke, you see? So if you do one brushstroke wrong, people can tell a mile away that you didn't have enough strength as you went around that corner. The NZ landscape is something that inspires me to paint. It sort of has this sort of Zen-ness to it, you know. Um, I feel, like, I'm very comfortable, you know, and I'm just doing my own little thing. And the day just goes past really quick. When I'm doing calligraphy painting, I'm just mainly using the Chinese brushstrokes that I've learnt. And, um, the reason why we use the Chinese brushstrokes is really to train up a system of how my hand moves around, my wrist moves around, and that allows me to perform certain shapes if I` if I want to. I can't really imagine myself doing another job, really, because right now I'm pretty Zenned out, you know, in doing, um, paintings, you know, at home and just, like, spending` spending, like, you know, most of my time figuring out, you know, how to improve my techniques and stuff. CALM MUSIC My passion when I was a kid was really to paint and draw. That was the main thing that I really focused myself in. And then, um, as I got older, I sort of had the choice of doing architecture, because that was the closest thing that would, you know, lead to stability. My parents are slowly coming to accept that I am becoming an artist and art is more of a job than just a fancy thing that I do on the side dish, you know? Parents would actually think, you know, of actually telling friends and families that I'm an artist, rather than, you know, telling them I'm an architect still trying to find work, yeah. UPLIFTING MUSIC I'm participating in White Night at Parnell. Almost like art week, you know, we have a lot of different artists come together. I'll be showing people how I actually create one of these pieces, so I'll be painting live. Right now I'm painting a giant carp painting and it's the symbol of prosperity. What I've done is I've constructed a few designs for adult colouring-in book sheets. And then the public gets to colour-in my designs. It's always been fun doing interactive work with the public. And it's always nice to educate the public a little bit more about Chinese culture. It's very cool how White Night is coming alive during the night-time at Parnell. When I first started my art career, I started asking myself the big questions ` if I'm a painter or am I an artist? And it always fell under the fact that, you know, am I painting for survival, like, you know, of aesthetics, and then people just buy my work because they look cool? Or am I actually an artist? And what is an artist to me? The way that an artist works is very different, because, um, an artist basically conveys a message that, you know, talks about space and time and movements during, you know, history. So, you know, basically, when we die, you know, our works won't die, because our messages will live on. And that's how I sort of see myself now. I think, in many ways, I'm still very much a Russian. I've lived here for 20 years, and I still can't completely relax into the laid-back way of life here. I have that real Moscow 'go, go, go' attitude. My boss even wants to make me a T-shirt that says, 'This is not a democracy ` I'm a Russian.' But, really, NZ has provided the most beautiful home for me here. I think it is wonderful when the new migrants can embrace what NZ really has to offer. And looking around me tonight at all the life and colour that can be found on Parnell Rd, it really does feel like there is a world of opportunity right here. Captions by Madison Batten. Edited by Ingrid Lauder. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016