Whanganui Artists Open Studios boosts economy, attracts visitors

Whanganui Arts @ The Centre hosted the starting point exhibition for the 2025 Artists Open Studios trail.

Whanganui Artists Open Studios, an art trail event, continues to grow with more events, studios, visitors and artists every year.

Artists Open Studios (AOS), founded in 2001 by Whanganui artists Sue Cooke and Catherine Macdonald, is now the largest, longest-running and most diverse art trail event in New Zealand.

This year the trail included 86 studios displaying various artistic disciplines including glass-blowing, pottery, carving, painting and photography.

The trail begins at Whanganui Arts @ The Centre where one piece from each gallery is showcased, allowing people to choose which studios they most want to visit.

“There’s a really good mix of interesting art,” said AOS chairwoman Lynne Vinsen.

Over the years, AOS has expanded in visitor numbers and events.

Mainstreet Whanganui general manager and AOS event co-ordinator Charlie Meyerhoff said many of the event’s visitors were from Wellington.

She also noticed multiple large groups of women from Auckland who had solidified AOS as an annual “girls' trip” destination.

“A lot of money went through this city over the last 10 days. For the Whanganui economy, I think it was sensational,” she said.

A few years ago the starting point exhibition had about 600 visitors over the two weekends, but this year the first Saturday alone had 800 people visit the gallery, Meyerhoff said.

“It was phenomenal how many groups we had here,” she said.

Originally, the event was confined to two weekends but activities throughout the week in between have expanded AOS to a 10-day affair.

Initially, there was concern it would be a waste of time to open the studios during the week, but Meyerhoff said its success had been proven with one studio making more than $1200 from a single group on Wednesday.

Meyerhoff hoped that in the future, businesses outside the art industry would get involved by hosting their own events in the evenings.

“What we are encouraging is for other businesses in the city to realise they’ve got 10 days where we’ve got this audience coming from all over and it would be cool if they put their own events on,” she said.

“It’s not just one sector that benefits.”

The latest addition to AOS was a youth-led mural project.

Meyerhoff was inspired by a speech at the Whanganui War Memorial Centre by 19-year-old Seth Raela, who said there were not enough opportunities for young artists in Whanganui.

This year she recruited Raela to do a mural for AOS in the alley connecting Victoria Ave and St Hill St.

Artists Seth Raela (Whanganui) and Aleisha Roulston (Auckland) created a mural for Artists Open Studios 2025. Photo / Olivia Reid

“Over the last year we’ve been really scratching our heads about what we can do,” Meyerhoff said.

“He’s made it something quite public, and quite big and bold to get the rest of his age group interested and inspire them.”

The mural depicts sea creature silhouettes over a colourful background, reflecting the AOS 2025 theme, “Aramoana”.

Raela and Auckland-based artist Aleisha Roulston began creating the mural over the past weekend.

“I would now love to see this become a thing where every year that age group can submit work and once a piece gets picked and we find building owners in the CBD that will allow us to paint a mural,” Meyerhoff said.

Vinsen said AOS brought people to Whanganui not just for 10 days but permanently.

“We know for a fact that people come from out of town and realise that Whanganui is where they want to live,” she said.

She attributed this to the event being spread throughout Whanganui, allowing people to explore the suburbs and experience the culture and community.

“I think city-wide this is really important, we know that this is really important.”

Visen attributed the ongoing and growing success of AOS to the passion of the board, the participating artists and the attendees.

“They’re passionate about the event and Whanganui,” she said.

Olivia Reid is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.