Turner Centre celebrates 10 years

FINISHED: Former prime minister Helen Clark with Kerikeri Civic Trust chairman Doug Turner, after whom the Turner Centre is now named, at its 2005 opening. PHOTO/TANIA WEBB

Kerikeri's Turner Centre is celebrating its 10th birthday with nine days of festivities and performances starting today.

The state-of-the-art performing arts venue, said to be the best north of Auckland and built at a cost of $7.5million (mostly grants and donations), was opened by then-prime minister Helen Clark on August 5, 2005.

A second phase, including a theatre and concert venue called the Plaza, opened in 2012.

The highlight of the celebrations will be a variety concert on Wednesday evening featuring kapa haka by Bay of Islands College and Te Pito Whenua (the cultural group at Waitangi Treaty Grounds), a short play by the Kerikeri Theatre Company, the Bay of Islands Singers, Northern Dance Academy, and rock band Rangitane Riot. Other performers will include up-and-coming opera star Kauwiti Selwyn and singers Tania Priebs and Daniel Morrison, who also appeared in Testing Testing, the first show at the centre.

Other events will include a thank-you dinner for Turner Centre volunteers, a floral art show, a celebratory church service, and the Auckland Symphony Orchestra performing works by Gershwin and the late Kerikeri composer Russ Garcia. Garcia's wife, Gina, will cut the cake during tonight's volunteer dinner.

Originally called the Bay of Islands Cultural Centre and later The Centre, it was renamed in 2011 after Doug Turner, one of its founders and a long-serving trust chairman. It includes the 400-seat John Dalton Auditorium, a theatre bar, events centre and the Plaza Theatre.

Mr Turner said the anniversary celebrations were "all about the volunteers". Volunteers raised millions of dollars from 1995, when the Kerikeri Civic Trust was formed, until the door opened in 2005; then they had to run the centre because there was no money to pay staff.

While construction costs were largely covered by grants and donations, the Far North District Council has had to help cover the centre's operating costs. Earlier this year the council agreed to increase funding in exchange for the trust agreeing to meet a series of performance targets.

The centre hosts about 300 events a year and has 180 volunteers.

See www.turnercentre.co.nz for more information about anniversary events.