‘Our environment inspires our creativity.’
Anna Calver
In early 2021, Wellington became a stage with the ‘What if the city was a theatre?’ programme. Outsiders might have done a double take at unicorns and mermaids dancing in shop windows, but Wellingtonians barely batted an eyelid. It’s just another day on Cuba Street.
Wellington residents are a proud bunch. In the Nielsen Quality of Life Survey (2018), 89 percent of respondents rated the city as affording them a ‘good’, ‘very good’ or ‘extremely good’ quality of life. But the secret to the city’s success in these rankings is in Wellingtonians’ honesty. The cliché of the city being unbeatable on a good day is always said tongue-in-cheek, because those who live in Wellington know that most of the time the weather is horrendous. Measuring on sunshine alone, the city’s climate looks good on paper. On average, Wellington receives about 87 days of sunshine per year – slightly more than Auckland’s 84 days. But clearly that’s not the full story (everyone knows about the wind).
WellingtonNZ’s GM Marketing and Communications Anna Calver says Wellington’s wild weather and its reputation as a creative hub go hand in hand. “We’re a really wild place. The sun isn’t shining every day, so you get really interesting, talented people who are attracted to that environment. It makes the fabric of this place quite different to other urban centres where the sun is always shining.”
Wellington is not alone. Chicago, Manchester and Amsterdam all have reputations for
