New Creative Industries Centre Toi Te Pito opens Friday

New Creative Industries Centre Toi Te Pito opens Friday

NorthTec’s new Creative Industries Centre, Toi Te Pito, will be officially opened on Friday 26 October by the Hon. Steven Joyce, Minister of Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment.

The refurbishment project has been underway since the movement of the trades related courses to NorthTec’s Future Trades Campus in 2010. The renovations and new additions to the centre, including the Geoff Wilson Gallery, are finally complete, much to the pleasure of Programme Leader for Visual Arts, Lindsay Marks. “We are thrilled to have such a wonderful facility here in Whangarei,” he said. “Not only will the centre help us with our programme delivery, but we hope that our new resources can help us to work closer with others in the industry both locally and nationally.”

Toi Te Pito will be open from 10.30am – 4pm following the official opening, allowing the public to tour the facility, attend workshop demonstrations and talk to tutors about their programmes. Programmes such as Photography, Beauty Therapy, Hairdressing, Fashion, Multimedia, Applied Arts and Māori Arts, will open their classrooms where current students will be working.

The centre will host live music all afternoon from local artists including Rockquest winners Luke and Amberly, R&B singer Ryan Karaka, and a family band from Moerewa, Fat 32.

The Geoff Wilson Gallery will have its doors open with the current exhibition ‘Settle’, and Fashion, Hairdressing and Beauty Therapy students will be showcasing their work at the ‘Show Off’ fashion show starting at 12pm.

NorthTec is looking forward to the event. “We are really excited that the opening of Toi Te Pito will benefit our Arts community, both in Whangarei and across Northland as a whole,” said NorthTec’s Creative Industries Director, Khalid Bakhshov. “The opening is in line with what is already happening within the community, such as the reopening of the Arts Museum at the new premises in the Town Basin. We are pleased to be able to contribute to Whangarei’s thriving Arts community, and to reinforce that Northland, and in particular Whangarei, is an attractive place to live.”

NorthTec is the Tai Tokerau (Northland) region's largest provider of tertiary education, with campuses and learning centres in Whangarei, Kerikeri, Rāwene, Kaikohe and Kaitaia. NorthTec also has over 60 community-based delivery points from Coatesville in rural Rodney to Ngataki in the Far North.

ENDS

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