Hawke's Bay Arts Festival: Man pays for 14 magic shows for school children

Opportunities like these are the key to introducing young children to the performing arts, Bruce Mactaggart says. Photo / Warren Buckland

The laughter and wonder at Bridge Pa School said it all.

Kids at 14 more-isolated Hawke's Bay schools are getting free magic shows to lift their spirits in tough times, all thanks to the generosity of one man.

The Hawke's Bay Arts Festival opened this week, and as part of it Rollicking Entertainment's Magic and Mayhem show is travelling to rural schools in Hawke's Bay from Central Hawke's Bay to Wairoa.

The Rural Schools Outreach programme was developed by Hawke's Bay Arts Festival Education manager Lisa-Jane Easter and arts benefactor Bruce Mactaggart over conversations they had together about the importance of access to the arts for rural schools who, by their geographical location to regional performing arts centres and initiatives, rarely seem to gain access to the performing arts.

Level 2 restrictions meant all of the Hawke's Bay Arts Festival offerings for schools at local theatre venues by Auckland-based companies needed to be postponed to next year.

Mactaggart, a long-time supporter of the Hawke's Bay Arts Festival, gave the funding for 14 rural schools around Hawke's Bay to get free access to Magic and Mayhem, by circus artists and theatre makers Lizzie Tollemache and David Ladderman.

"I'm very conscious of small, more remote communities who rarely, if ever, get opportunities to be exposed to experiences like the arts that most of us take for granted," Mactaggart said.

"And we have also turned the challenge of assembly number limits into a positive opportunity by going to places with small student numbers."

"I'm obviously delighted to see the joy and laughter this initiative has brought and continues to bring to these kids around the district wide schools."

Mactaggart bore witness to the delightful responses by pupils of Bridge Pa School on Wednesday morning, to the Magic and Mayhem performance.

"Opportunities like these are the key to introduce children at a young age to the performing arts."

Festival director Pitsch Leiser says the relationship between schools and the Arts Festival has always been an important focus of the festival and it is a wonderful initiative that Mactaggart has enabled through his targeted support for rural schools, who have missed out on many other opportunities this year, because of the effects of the Covid restrictions.

"Bruce has enabled us to deliver an education outcome in a creative and different way being responsive to the current alert level restrictions"

• Magic and Mayhem is performed and presented by Rollicking Entertainment, who are sideshow stunt specialists, circus artists and theatre makers, who produce and tour original work, weaving storytelling, physical feats and snippets of history together. They have performed in nine countries and won many awards including the Iron Chicken, the World Buskers Festival's prestigious critics' choice award.