A recent entrant in the Show Us Your City com­pet­i­tion, Amber Parkin’s This Is My Auck­land is a mul­ti­fa­ceted web­site explor­ing words, design, pho­to­graphy and inter­act­ive map­ping. The format was motiv­ated by Amber’s desire to depict the many-sided nature of her bay city.

Images cour­tesy of Amber Parkin

Com­pared to many other world centres, Auck­land is a rel­at­ively small city. How does this affect the cre­at­ive communities?

We’ve all heard the joke that every­one has only six degrees of sep­ar­a­tion with Kevin Bacon right? Well in Auck­land (and New Zea­l­and) you can make it just 3. It seems every­body knows or has heard of every­body else. This makes for a super close-knit com­munity with a ton of cros­sover between dif­fer­ent cre­at­ive endeav­ours. It also makes it easier to con­nect with people who can help you, or the people who inspire you. I think the size also forces people to be more resource­ful. If you need assist­ance there’s not always going to be an ‘expert’ in every cre­at­ive skill/trade, so often people learn how to do things them­selves, impro­vise and innov­ate. On a national scale, this idea of ‘DIY’ is illus­trated extremely well by the agri­cul­ture and film industries.

Can you tell us a little more about the Big Ideas fea­tured in the ‘mapped’ sec­tion of the site?

While I love the place, I appre­ci­ate that Auck­land isn’t the most cre­at­ive city yet, but there’s a lot of poten­tial. After act­ively read­ing the Cre­at­ive Cit­ies site and ref­er­en­cing other met­ro­pol­ises I’ve vis­ited, I became really inspired; “Big Ideas” is about the things that we could initiate/do more of to make Auck­land a bet­ter, more inter­est­ing place to be. Most of my ideas are tiny (things I could do myself) but I think we should def­in­itely look towards Tokyo for some ingeni­ous ideas (pocket farms, recyc­ling spaces) and adapt them for the local lifestyle.

You men­tion the mul­ti­cul­tural aspect of Auck­land, how does this inter­na­tional melt­ing pot of eth­ni­city influ­ence the city’s cre­at­ive scene?

Right now there’s a lot of inter­est­ing fusion hap­pen­ing between cul­tures, espe­cially in the music scene. For example Zoh Zoh is local band that blend tra­di­tional West African instru­ments with west­ern European brass and gui­tars. The mem­bers of the eight-piece band identify with a lot of dif­fer­ent cul­tures — Maori, Pakeha, Pakistani, Rwandan and Ghanaian. Get them all together and they pump out Jamaican inspired Afrobeat sounds. Gen­er­ally, vibe around here is: we all respect each other’s back­grounds, but let’s mash it up and cre­ate some­thing new!

What would you share about your city and it’s cre­at­ive energy? Show Us your City for a chance to win a trip to the Lon­don Fest­ival of Architecture!

Amber Par­kin maps a per­sonal jour­ney through Auck­land as she shows us her city.