Bay Harbour: December 19, 2018

Wednesday December 19 2018
Latest Christchurch news at www.star.kiwi
BAY HARBOUR
PAGE 13
Our People
Bringing Chch back to life post-quake
WE ARE ON THE
MOVE AGAIN...
•From page 11
How did you go from
electrical engineering to theatre
and film?
Electrical engineering, as it was
taught at my university in the
US, was actually a very creative
discipline. It wasn’t a word that
they ever used at all, but it was a
lot of small group work in the lab,
dreaming up things you might
be able to design and build and
testing things out on paper, then
test circuits and when you hit
something that seems workable,
you take it out into the real world.
So I got a lot of opportunities
as a student to dream of crazy
things and work with a few
friends from start to finish on
a project. I loved that. Then
towards the end of the degree,
myself and all of my friends were
being recruited by giant multinational
corporations, which
have really strong recruitment
programmes. I was going to
be an aerospace manufacturer,
which made military planes, and
I had other friends ending up
with really huge companies. I
moved to Texas for an internship
experience and was at a facility
where they built military planes.
There were more than 30,000
people that worked there.
That kind of romantic thing
TO A NEW LOCATION IN
FERRYMEAD, DUE TO
EARTHQUAKE REPAIRS
GAMERS: Ryan Reynolds helped create the giant arcade game
on Tuam St, which he says was one his favourite projects.
of working in small groups,
thinking up projects and seeing
them through from start to finish
is just not the truth of working in
a company like that. I was young
and stupid and freaked out, so I
decided to run about as far away
as you could and that was to New
Zealand.
So you came to Canterbury
University?
I ended up doing an
exchange in the final year of my
engineering degree. I picked New
Zealand because it was far away
So Canterbury University was
also an engineering university.
In the US tertiary system,
everyone needs to get some arts
points, even if you’re getting an
engineering degree. When I got
to Canterbury, I didn’t need any
more engineering credits, so I
got involved in various arts and
humanities. The theatre and film
studies programme was where I
landed, they offered me a postgraduate
position and I never
looked back.
What’s your favourite film?
Probably Fellini’s​ 8½ still,
although I haven’t seen it in a
long while.
I bet you get really sick of
people mentioning a certain
Hollywood movie star you share
a name with?
Burt Reynolds! Yeah, it’s a
shame about him dying and
all, that’s who you mean, right?
Okay, he’s the bane of my
existence.
How did Gap Filler come
about?
It was started up after the
September 4, 2010, earthquake.
Coralie was working at the Arts
Centre, running the artist-inresidence
programme, and the
Arts Centre made a really quick
decision when the buildings
were badly-damaged to halt all
of their public programmes, so
she was made redundant almost
immediately. I was employed at
the university at that time, so we
were in a really fortunate position
to say, don’t rush into anything,
take a bit of time and see what
happens. I think it was really
Coralie wandering the city and
seeing gap sites where buildings
had been demolished and who
knows how long they would
be empty for. They were all of
our social gathering spaces, the
cheap and cheerful restaurants,
the amateur dance studios in the
WATCH THIS SPACE
and no one else was coming here.
upper floors, the cultural life of
the city had really been damaged
more than the infrastructure
in that September quake. So all
credit to Coralie for hatching
the idea for what became Gap
Filler. We lost our house in the
February quake and just about
everything we owned. The scale
of the disaster was so big. We put
out the message on Facebook –
that’s the end of our Gap Filler
experiment. But a bunch of
people got in touch saying, no,
all of the cinemas in the central
city are closed, so you need to do
an outdoor cinema project, the
libraries are closed, so let’s do
some sort of book project. For the
next year and a half, everything
we did was pretty much someone
else’s idea that we helped
facilitate.
What’s your favourite Gap
Filler project so far?
They’re all so different. I really
love the Super Street Arcade
project, the giant arcade game
on Tuam St. That’s been there for
two years, it still gets 300 games
played every day. Hopefully
we might have one going in in
Melbourne early-mid next year
and I think that would get a lot
of attention. So that’s definitely a
favourite. Every time I cycle past
and see the look on people’s faces
discovering it for the first time it
is pretty priceless.
Dr Brendan Smith
from the doctors and staff at Ferrymead Medical Centre
If you would lIke advIce
and treatment wIth:
If you would lIke advIce and treatment wIth:
arlotte
We will keep you informed as to our
new address.
• Women’s health • Children’s & teenage health & wellbeing
• Older persons health • Lifestyle advice
• Warrant of fitness checks for men and women
• Helping patients manage long term medical problems
Dr Gort Stephan
Dr Sophia Harris
Dr Nicola Carey
• Removal of skin lesions • Sports medicine • Vasectomies
• Occupational and company medicine We • will Drug be testing closed
from 4pm Monday
• Pre-employment medicals • Stopping smoking support
December 24,
• Travel vaccinations
Dr Charlotte Cooper
• Women’s health • Children’s & teenage health & wellbeing • Older persons health
• Lifestyle advice • Sports medicine • Travel vaccinations • Removal of skin lesions
• Warrant of fitness checks for men and women • Pre-employment medicals
• Helping patients manage long term medical problems • Stopping smoking support
• Vasectomies • Occupational Gort and company medicine • Drug testing
at 8.30am Monday
New patients welcome Ph. 384 5484
Ferrymead
MEDICAL
c e n t r e
MERRY CHRISTMAS
and a happy and safe holiday
2018 and reopening
January 7, 2019
ferrymead
medIcal centre
ferrymead medIcal centre
unIt 10/2 waterman Place
Phone 384-5484
Mon to Fri 8.30am-5.30pm
Dr David Robertson