A warm and welcoming gathering to practice te reo Māori in a social setting. Join us fortnightly for an evening of books, kōrero, connection and a glass of something to sip.

Art Space for Teens is a relaxed, supportive visual arts space for teens aged 14-18 to experiment, create, and follow their own ideas. No pressure, grades, or expectation of prior experience. Mondays during Term 3, from 3:30pm. Registrations are essential. Book individual classes, or the full term.

Come along to our Afterschool Programme lead by our Education team, where we form a fun environment for creative learning for tamariki (children) aged 5–13. Classes run 3:30-5pm, and cover a range of arts practices. Registrations are essential.

Saturday Arts Social is a multi-arts programme and morning tea designed for our 60+ community. We gather every Saturday morning for a broad programme of events including concerts, art workshops, dance/movement classes and artist talks. Next event: Saturday 12 September, 10:30am.

Our September-October Arts Holiday Programme is back with two weeks of hands-on creative adventures for tamariki aged 5–7 and 8–13. With classes running from Monday 28 September - Friday 9 October from 9am - Extended hours available.

Wriggle and Rhyme is a free weekly music and movement programme for ages 0 – 2, facilitated by Sunny Sky from EpicKids. Taking place on Mondays, there are two sessions available: 10am – 10:45am for Toddlers (Under-2s) and 11:00am – 11:45am for Babies.

Join Queenstown Arts Society for classical figure drawing sessions guided by artist Kasia Hebda from Kasia Hebda Studio. Enhance your drawing skills and deepen your understanding of composition, line, mass, and texture through observational drawing with a life model. Book as you go. Classes run 6pm - 7:30pm. Please arrive 10mins before start time.

Queenstown Arts Society warmly invites our community to experience The Mountain Remembers — a vibrant showcase of original works by talented local artists and makers. Opening is 6:30-8:30pm, Thursday 20 August 2026.

The Adam Portraiture Award is Aotearoa New Zealand's premier award for painted portraiture. Presented biennially by the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata, the award has become one of the country's most significant and anticipated art prizes.

Join us on the third Tuesday of each month for Community Craft - a free, drop-in night to explore creative forms like writing, sewing, and dance. All levels and ages welcome. Come along and hone a craft! Next event: Tuesday 15 September, 7pm - 8pm

Explore symmetry through collaborative pattern-making using hand-carved stamps, ink, and guided mark-making techniques. Discover how simple shapes evolve into intricate designs in this hands-on workshop with artist Grant Whibley. Workshop runs 6:30 - 8pm.

You are warmly invited to the inaugural Lakes District Public Art Trust lecture, featuring keynote speaker Natasha Smith, Global Curatorial Director at UAP. Running from 4:30-6:30pm, this event is free to attend but bookings are essential.

Presented as part of Mīharo’s annual art awards and exhibition, Legends of Our Lands – Our People, Our Places, Our Stories brings together artworks by tamariki and rangatahi from Early Childhood, Primary and Secondary education, alongside artists in Mīharo’s open 18–25-year-old category. The opening for the show and awards will be presented on Wednesday 23 September at 5.30pm - all are welcome to join.

A half-day wānaka (workshop) that offers migrants and newcomers to the Whakatipu region an opportunity to connect with the stories, people, and culture of this whenua (land). Running 9:30am - 1:30pm, spaces are limited so bookings are essential.

Join us at our open rehearsals anytime between 10am - 5pm, and experience the sights and sounds of our At the World's Edge Festival Artists deep within their performance preparation. Free to attend, no bookings required.

Fresh from the Edinburgh Fringe, Extra Lives is a live interactive adventure where your choices shape the story and you are the main character. Runs for 60 minutes.

Celebrate the arrival of AWE 2026 into Tāhuna Queenstown with a free performance from the 2026 AWE Pettman Scholars Christine Jeon (cello) and Matthew Seinafo (piano) for this 45 minute showcase.

Welcoming internationally renowned pianist David Fung to the AWE stage for the first time, Strung traces connections across generations, where musical lines are passed, reshaped, and renewed. Part of the At the World's Edge Festival of Chamber music, this performance runs from 7:30 - 9pm.

Community Sing is an open, drop-in choir for everyone in the community. It's free and open to all! No registration required. Our next session will take place on Tuesday 6 October, 7pm-8pm.

Join us at our open rehearsals anytime between 10am - 6:30pm, and experience the sights and sounds of our At the World's Edge Festival Artists deep within their performance preparation. Free to attend, no bookings required.

An AWE+ Free Performance showcasing our 2026 Emerging Artists and composer, this programme traces lines of friendship, place and musical inheritance. This free showcase runs from 4:45 - 5:30pm.

An AWE+ Free Talk from Emeritus Professor Brian J Boyle exploring why Otago is such a special place on the planet for astronomy. Experience the majesty of our night skies, with a little bit of astrophysics and cosmology thrown in. This talk runs from 6:30 - 7pm and is free to attend.

Radiance explores music drawn along the threshold between presence and distance, memory and vastness. From the incomprehensible scale of deep space to the intimacy of nocturnal reflection, musical lines drift, suspend, and hover between what is present and what is remembered, what is near and what lies beyond the reach of human scale. Part of the At the World's Edge Festival of Chamber music, this performance runs from 7:30 - 9pm.

From Keats’ ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’ to Girl with a Pearl Earring starring Scarlett Johansson, art has long inspired screenwriters, poets and writers. Join poet, songwriter and editor Laura Williamson for a session set among, and inspired by, the finalists for The Adam Portraiture Award 2026. Workshop runs 1-4pm.

An AWE+ Free Talk with this year’s Composer in Residence, Michael Norris who will talk about his life and music. Part of the At the World's Edhe Festival of chamber music, this event runs from 3:45 - 4:30pm. Free to attend, no bookings required.

Te Atamira brings the festival to a close with The Line, a programme that traces music's most essential journey: from a single footprint in an empty landscape, through voices shaped by love, loss, and encounter, to a musical line forcibly rewritten by history, revealing music's enduring ability to connect us across time. Running for 90minutes, there are two performances of The Line: 2pm or 5pm.

Join us with sketchbook and pencil in hand for Community Draw, on the second Tuesday of every month. No experience necessary - come along and embrace the joy of different approaches to drawing. Next event: Tuesday 13 October, 6:30-8pm.

'Whenu Ki Te Whenua' invites you into Te Whare Pora (the house of weaving), where raranga becomes a living conversation between people, place, and the natural world. Guided by the kaupapa “the strands that connect us to the land,” this exhibition honours the relationship between weaver, whenua, and te taiao. Free to visit over the weekend 17-18 October, 2026.