Ellen Melville Centre

05/10/2026

📍 THIS WEEK!! ✨

OH NO! PUBLIC POETRY / OCTOBER SESSION:
POETRY IN PLACE 🗺️ 📝

Some poems belong somewhere.

This October, Oh No Poetry Collective is putting poems onto maps, pinning them to places, memories, streets, homes & everywhere in between, creating a landscape made from our poems.

Bring a poem. Find a place for it. See what the map becomes.

📍 Paddy Walker Room
📅 Thursday 8 Oct
🕖 7 - 9pm
✨ FREE EVENT | ALL WELCOME
🚫 No registration needed

05/10/2026

We had such a good time on Saturday! Big energy, great people, plenty of colour, culture, music & community ❤️

Guess what? We’re doing it again!

💃🏽 CARNAVAL LATINO AUCKLAND - .latinonz
Saturday 14 November | 10am–3pm
📍 Freyberg Square & Ellen Melville Centre, Auckland Centra

Come celebrate the vibrant cultures of Latin America in the heart of Tāmaki Makaurau! Expect a lively day filled with delicious food, music, dance, art, crafts & community, with Latin American food vendors, artisan makers, local Latinx artists & small businesses, alongside colourful folkloric dance & live performances bringing Freyberg Square to life.

🌮 Delicious Latin American street food
🎶 Live music & folkloric dance
🎨 Crafts, local Latinx artists & small businesses
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Activities for tamariki & whānau
🐾 Pet-friendly vibes - bring your furry friends!

Everyone is welcome. Come along & celebrate community together with Carnaval Latino Auckland 💃🏽 🌎 ✨

29/09/2026

🌴💃 CARNAVAL LATINO IS THIS SATURDAY! 🥳🎶

Get ready for a colourful day of music, dancing, culture, delicious food & BIG Latin American vibes right in the heart of Auckland! 🌎❤️

Bring the kids, bring your whānau, bring your dancing shoes & come celebrate the school holidays with our wonderful Latin American community. ✨

Expect live music, traditional dancing, tasty treats, vibrant culture & plenty of reasons to get up and move! 💃🕺🌮🎺

🎉 FREE ENTRY - EVERYONE WELCOME!

📅 Saturday 3 October
⏰ 10am - 3pm
📍 Freyberg Square, 2 Freyberg Place, Auckland C*D

Come for the culture, stay for the music, food & good times! ❤️

¡Nos vemos! See you there! 🥳🌴💃

*D # Latino Auckland

23/09/2026

Did you know you can hire spaces here at EMC?

All of our spaces are available to hire & we offer community rates to help make our rooms accessible for local groups, organisations, creatives, community projects & all kinds of gatherings.

There’s also something pretty special about our spaces. . . . they’re all named after pioneering women. ✊🏽✨

Today, meet the MARILYN WARING ROOM - Named after Marilyn Waring CNZM; NZ feminist, former politician, author, academic & activist, her work has had a huge influence on feminist economics, public policy, governance, human rights & environmental thinking.

Marilyn is perhaps best known for her groundbreaking 1988 book 'If Women Counted', which challenged the way traditional economic systems value (& fail to value) women’s work.

Her mahi famously questions economic measures that count things like oil spills & wars as economic activity, while unpaid work such as child-rearing & housekeeping can disappear from the numbers.

So what happens in our Marilyn Waring Room? Pretty much a bit of everything! It’s a smaller, intimate space that works beautifully for:

🗣️ Hui & Community Connections
📚 Talks & Information-sharing
🎨 Creative Workshops
✍🏽 Poetry Readings
🌱 Small Group Sessions
💭 Informal Gatherings & Kōrero
🎭 Intimate Events

It has High Street access, tables & chairs, a large TV screen with connectors, heating/cooling & a whiteboard. There’s also access to toilets, a kitchen & free Wi-Fi.

The room has been used for everything from a Pride Festival Artist in Residence space, to Plunket visits supporting whānau to check on pēpi's development, to formal buisness hui. Basically, it's a small room with lots of possibilities. 💜

👉🏽 Check availability & book the Marilyn Waring Room here:
https://bookings.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/facilities/facility/ellen-melville-centre

22/09/2026

LIGHT THROUGH THE DUST ✨

The group that gathered a few weeks ago for this Auckland premiere screening, experienced a raw, moving documentary that explored trauma, grief, resilience & recovery.

The kōrero afterwards was something special - informal Q&A with filmmaker Amber Beaton alongside Bonnie Singh & Jak Law was an open, honest conversation with plenty of thoughtful questions, reflections & stories from the room.

People stayed, chatted, connected, took photos & helped pack down. A small screening with a big heart. 🖤

Huge thanks to Amber, Bonnie & Jak for sharing their stories so generously & to everyone who came along, listened, asked questions, making the evening what it was.

21/09/2026

For National Poetry Day last month, the wonderful Sophie Procter spent the morning creating over 20 original, personalised poems for people who stopped by. A word, a memory, a feeling, a person is all it took for Sophie to turn it into something people could take home. Some of the moments were pretty special…

💜 One man had tears in his eyes after reading his poem.

👶 One regular had a poem written for his 18 month-old, looking forward to take home & readit to her.

👯 Friends encouraged each other to have a go & strangers stopped, watched & read the pavement verses.

📝 Sophie even wrote a poem for EMC, which is now proudly sitting on our pinboard. We LOVE it & we’re planning to give it a bigger public moment soon!

It doesn't have to be complicated.
It doesn't have to be perfect.
Sometimes it just needs a little invitation. National Poetry Day is about making poetry visible, accessible and part of everyday life, bringing words, creativity & people together💜

Huge THANK YOU SOPHIE for bringing your talent, generosity & beautiful energy to EMC 🌸

21/09/2026

💜 Our SUFFERAGE DAY QUIZ brought 20+ people through our doors, some with their quiz teams ready to go, others arriving solo & quickly finding themselves part of an impromptu team!

We celebrated Te Mana o te Ingoa Wāhine: Celebrating Women’s Suffrage by sharing the stories behind the women our rooms are named after including; Ellen Melville, Dame Helen Clark, Dame Marilyn Waring, Betty Wark, Elizabeth Yates & Paddy Walker. But it was more than just names & facts. One visitor was moved to tears learning about Betty Wark’s incredible legacy of community work & advocacy. 💜

There was quiz banter, new friends, new facts, sweet treats, fresh white camellias & Suffragist Spritz mocktails apon arrival!🍸

A big thank you to Unity Books, High St, for our prizes, plus the National Council of Women - Auckland Branch for the quiz questions & spritz recipe & last, but not least our absolute star Quiz Master Mathea Lim! 🌟

We also would like to give a shout out to the On A Roll crew who brought brilliant energy, information & encouragement for rangatahi voters, even on a drizzly Auckland evening.

That’s a pretty great way to celebrate Suffrage Day. 💜✊



#

https://onaroll.nz/

17/09/2026

14/09/2026

☕🍪 DUNK IT FOR PLUNKET! 👶💛

Calling all mums, dads, caregivers & pēpi - come along to EMC next Tuesday for a cuppa, a bikkie dunk & a little whānau-friendly fun!

🎨 Colouring-in activities
🤝 Meet other mums & caregivers
☕ Share a cuppa for tamariki
🍪 Dunk some bickies
🎁 Go in the Huggies prize draw for your chance to WIN!

📅 Tuesday 22 September
🕙 10am -12pm
📍 Betty Wark Room, Ellen Melville Centre
🎟️ FREE, all welcome!

Come along, bring your pēpi, have a natter & help support Whānau Āwhina Plunket, Aotearoa’s largest support service for the health & wellbeing of tamariki under five & their whānau.

A little dunk. A big difference. 💛