The Cultural Icons Project

Depot’s Cultural Icons project celebrates people who have contributed significantly to New Zealand’s creative landscape. It is a series of recorded interviews and programmes whose aim is to share the histories, stories and experiences of some of our most significant visual artists, architects, publishers, entrepreneurs, writers, musicians, arts commentators and philanthropists.

The interviews are between friends and contemporaries and form a fascinating cultural genealogy. Warm, informed and often intimate, the dialogues are a rare insight into these iconic people’s creative journeys, their youthful ambitions, their hurdles, successes and their contributions to New Zealand’s arts and culture scene.

The audio interviews are accessible online and provided free of charge. As well as creating a valuable and accessible archive for researchers and students, The Depot also actively promotes the interviews to a wider audience.

Other Depot initiatives inspired and supported by the Cultural Icons project are The Vernacular Lounge and The Cultural Mapping Project.

The Vernacular Lounge is an intimate living room where the influences that shape New Zealand’s distinctive cultural identity as defined by its art, architecture, literature, film and other cultural forms, are discussed, debated, explored and celebrated.

The ‘lounge’, while not peculiar to New Zealand, is traditionally and typically the social hub of the New Zealand home and it is in this spirit and form that the Vernacular Lounge will host and initiate presentations, exhibitions, happenings, recitals, screenings, concerts and performances that explore and develop our cultural vernacular.

The Vernacular Lounge also houses the Cultural Mapping Project, a dynamic process of mapping which uncovers social and cultural connections and gives them visibility.

See depot.org.nz for more information on the Vernacular Lounge and The Cultural Mapping Project.

The Depot is a multidisciplinary creative community which is open and inclusive and encourages engagement in all art forms. It initiates and nurtures new projects of which Cultural Icons and the Vernacular Lounge are two.

…creating an environment that encourages creating…

depot.org.nz