Go to WORD!
The countdown to the fabulous WORD Christchurch festival is well and truly underway – and despite her very busy workload, Executive Director, Steph Walker, took some time to share her thoughts the importance of creativity with us. Steph has a distinguished career in the arts, having joined WORD in 2022 after being Auckland Arts Festival’s Head of Programming. She also produced several festivals in Australia and was instrumental in leading the Christchurch Arts Festival through the unsteady times of the earthquakes sequence that began in 2011.
How would you describe what you do?
I’m a Creative Producer. I take ideas, sometimes my own, sometimes others, and I make them happen. I’ve worked across a lot of artforms – theatre, classical and contemporary music, dance, visual art and everything in between – but it generally involves crafting great experiences for artists and audiences.
What are you working on right now?
The wonderful WORD Christchurch. We have the 2025 festival this month, a five-day feast of storytelling, books and ideas. We have a great team of tremendously competent people I’m working with, and over 100 writers from all sorts of backgrounds playing a vital part in the events. At the same time as the festival, we’re cooking up some events for later in the year, and planning for 2026 and beyond. One eye is always on the future!
What project have you worked on that you’re most proud of?
Probably LongGrass, a contemporary dance work by Wirandjuri choreographer and dancer Vicki Van Hout, that premiered at Sydney Festival in 2015. Vicki is a force of nature and helping to showcase her work on an international platform was a huge privilege.
What is essential for creatives to have in their life?
Space for play, risk and failure. It feels harder and harder to leave space to fail, particularly in a professional realm where failure can be costly and it feels like everything has to be documented online, for better or for worse.
Also, I think it is key to find a way to get outside the artistic and algorithmic bubble we often inhabit. Having a life outside of your creative practice is so important to both bring new ideas and inspiration, but also to get you out of the echo chamber a life in the arts can be.
What inspires you about Ōtautahi?
Firstly, the taiao. Being so close to braided rivers, gusty coastlines, snowy mountains. It’s forever astonishing.
Having been here for all the shaky times, it’s also remembering how much we went through to make things happen at that time, and the way communities grew from a really hard space. We also gave each other permission to try out new things. We can get through the hard things. Sarah Read’s ribbon brooches that say “pressure makes diamonds” and “this too shall pass” are great physical manifestations of this feeling.
What piece of advice about your creative work has served you well?
That you can only eat an elephant one bite at a time. Good advice for considering any project, creative or otherwise. Let it be known that I would never actually eat an elephant.
What’s the biggest misconception about your creative work, or creative work in general?
We tend to judge people based on their current job title, but when you work in arts and events you tend to have a very varied background. My current role title is Executive Director, so often the biggest misconception is that I’m not creative. In reality, I have a really creative background, and anyone who works in small teams to make big things happen knows you need to use creative thinking to get there. That, and Canva, Creative Junk and a glue gun.
What Christchurch creatives do you most admire?
Juanita Hepi, Dr Jessica Halliday, Naomi van den Broek, Bea Gladding. They have all created amazing creative communities in Ōtautahi that are generous and authentic.
What artwork/piece of music/performance has taken your breath away?
Most recently, Belle – A Performance of Air from Malia Johnstone’s Movement of the Human company. The strength and grace of the performers, the rumbling sound, the stunning design… it all came together to create a live experience that had my jaw on the floor and left my most talkative friend speechless. I so wish we could see this work here in Ōtautahi. I would go again in a heartbeat.
What do you wish you’d have known about creative work when you were younger?
That it is hard work that not everyone values. Don’t expect to get rich, but you’ll certainly have a very rich life in so many other ways.
What book do you wish you’d written?
Oh gosh, this is hard. I think something timeless like Little Women or Pride and Prejudice, whose strong female characters have been sources of inspiration for generations of readers.
If you could host a dinner party for five writers – dead or alive – who would be at your table and why?
Laurie Anderson, for many reasons but mainly because she’s an animal lover like me.
Bernadine Evaristo, because she’s badass and it took a while to get her dues.
Carol Churchill, another badass from Britain, who uses her plays as weapons.
Billy T James, growing up I thought he was amazing and so so funny. I’d love to hear more about the process of making the Billy T Shows.
Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku because she is an astonishing and astute woman.
Place you love best in Christchurch?
I’m going to cheat and say my suburb, Linwood. It’s close to the city, got a bit of grittiness, a lot of heart, and it’s close to the winding awa and the peace of the redzone. There are also three places I can walk for amazing baked goods from my house – Bohemian Bakery, Peaches and Bread O’Clock.
Check out the WORD Christchurch programme here – and don’t miss out on being part of this amazing festival that celebrates readers, writers and thinkers.
27 – 31 August.