Dunedin, Aotearoa.

If you’ve spent time here, you know it well. You’ll know every curve and dip of the landscape as well as the lines on the palm of your hand. The smell of the air, a mix of coffee and the salty ocean. The foreboding grey clouds that hang over, ready to let loose. The hidden masterpieces painted on the sides of the buildings.

As two lasses who both independently spent time living overseas, returning to this place was pretty surreal. We forgot how green the colour of the gardens is, how good the taste of the coffee is, how rad the sound of the music is. Being born and raised here, we realised how much we had taken for granted. This got us thinking… we adore this strange and wonderful city in the south, and now we wanted to write all about it!

Our favourite thing about Dunedin is the people. This melting pot of individuals have come together and cooked up this awesome, artsy environment where there is a freedom to be creative. We have painters, singers, actors, photographers, chefs, composers, designers, entrepreneurs, dancers... There is so much talent here and more talent than meets the eye.

We want to celebrate it.

Which got us thinking even more… as well as writing about Dunedin itself, how about we write about some of the talented people that reside here?

Thus, on a frosty Saturday night in the ballroom at Lanarch’s Castle, in scribbles on scrap paper scattered across one of the dining tables – The Dunedin Artistry was born.