By Adrienne Matthews
This Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, Marlborough’s artists are opening their doors for a weekend that is about far more than art.
There is something particularly fitting about an arts trail raising money for people living with dementia because artists deal in memory all the time. A photograph holds a fraction of a second that has already disappeared. A painting can preserve a landscape, a face or a feeling long after the moment that inspired it has gone. Objects made by hand carry stories with them, sometimes for generations.
This September, that connection between creativity and memory takes on special meaning as the 5th Alzheimers Marlborough Arts Trail brings together 55 artists from around the region while raising funds for local people living with dementia mate wareware and the families alongside them.
For one weekend, on Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 September, studios, workshops, galleries and creative spaces that are often tucked away from public view will throw open their doors.
Visitors might find a painter at an easel in one corner of Marlborough, a ceramicist shaping clay in another, or discover photographers, jewellers, sculptors, textile artists, woodworkers and mixed-media artists exhibiting spaces they have driven past countless times without knowing what was happening inside.
That sense of discovery has become one of the pleasures of the trail, says volunteer Viv Broughton.
“People often tell us that meeting the artists becomes the highlight of their Arts Trail experience. Seeing where the work is created, hearing the inspiration behind it and having a conversation with the artist gives you a completely different appreciation for the artwork.”
There is no prescribed route and visitors simply choose where they want to go, making up their own itinerary and spending the day wandering through a side of Marlborough that is normally considerably less visible.
Behind the pleasure of the weekend, however, is a serious purpose. Around 83,000 New Zealanders are currently living with dementia mate wareware, with that figure expected to almost double by 2050. For the families involved, diagnosis can mark the beginning of a long and sometimes bewildering journey.
Alzheimers Marlborough’s support begins well before somebody needs its familiar Wither Road Day Programme.
Client Services Manager Nyara Nyajena says the organisation works alongside people from diagnosis onwards, providing education, practical advice, home visits, support groups, respite opportunities and guidance for families trying to negotiate what can be an enormously challenging period of their lives. As the number of people diagnosed increases, so does the demand for those services.
That makes the Arts Trail more than an enjoyable weekend out. Every dollar it raises stays in Marlborough.
This year’s event logo is a striking blue artwork carrying a message about dementia. Created by Marlborough artist Vasu Singh, it uses cyanotype, an early photographic process in which objects are placed on specially prepared paper and exposed to sunlight, leaving pale impressions against a deep Prussian blue.
For Vasu, the process became a beautiful metaphor for the way memory can change. “Some details may fade, but the person is still there,” she says. “Like the flower in the artwork, they’re still beautiful, even if they’re a little more fragile.”
It is a simple observation and an important one during Alzheimer’s Awareness Month. Dementia can alter memory, language and the ability to manage everyday life, but a diagnosis does not erase a person’s history, relationships or identity.
The Arts Trail celebrations begin a week earlier, this Saturday 12 September, when actor, director and writer Michael Hurst ONZM will officially launch the event at a gala evening at Oak & Ivy.
Hurst has a particularly relevant story to tell. He has been involved with In Other Words, the acclaimed stage production exploring a couple’s experience of Alzheimer’s disease and will speak about the play and the conversations it has prompted around dementia.
The evening will also include a live auction of donated artworks, while a silent art auction and community raffle give those unable to attend the trail other ways to support Alzheimers Marlborough.
The community raffle is an easy way for people to support Alzheimers Marlborough. With tickets sold at local supermarkets, it reaches people as they go about their everyday shopping, while every purchase contributes to services for Marlborough families living with dementia and also puts buyers in the draw for fabulous prizes donated by local businesses. The silent auction is on display outside Oak & Ivy/Wine + Food Experience until Sunday 20 September.
Tickets for the Gala Opening and Arts Trail are available through Eventbrite.
GALA EVENING WITH MICHAEL HURST
12th September 2026 at Oak&Ivy
ART TRAIL DATES
19th & 20th September 2026
10am to 4pm
