Upgrade and relocate the Dance-O-Mat

Ōtautahi Christchurch's beloved Dance-O-Mat is getting a new home, but we need your help to move it there! 

What is Dance-O-Mat?

Brought to you by Gap Filler, The Dance-O-Mat is a public, coin-operated dance floor on a vacant site on Gloucester Street, in the central city of Ōtautahi Christchurch. It was created in 2012 in response to the severe impact of the earthquakes on the city’s dance spaces. Used by thousands of people, it has featured all around the world in various publications.

Dance-O-Mat is a simple and fun public amenity that brings people together to dance. It features a sprung wooden floor, lights, speakers, hacked ex-laundromat washing machine and a mirror ball. Dropping $2 into the washing machine gets you 30 minutes of lighting and sound. You control the music using your device.  

Accessible to everyone and anyone, Dance-O-Mat encourages people to dance in public alongside strangers.

Sound implausible? It ain’t. We’ve seen it happen over and over again. Whether it’s families, friends, colleagues or passers-by, the Dance-O-Mat creates a place for fun and connection as well as bringing life to the city 10 years.

We need your help to relocate Dance-O-Mat!

The Dance-O-Mat has been on its current site for 7 years and needs to be relocated to make way for the Performing Arts Precinct construction. After so much use and time outside, Dance-O-Mat is in dire need of some TLC. To relocate and refurbish the Dance-O-Mat, we need to:

• Take it down on the current site safely and remove its concrete bases 

• Build and paint a new floor after so many winters outside

• Source and adapt a new washing machine (the current one is rather damaged) 

• Update electronics and technology that make it all work

• Prep the new site, relocate everything and install the shiny, new Dance-O-Mat

• Print and install new signage

All up this will cost $40K. We have $15K on hand and with your help, we need to raise the difference of $25K.  

What impact will this have?

With a Dance-O-Mat in our city, there is a space for spontaneous, delightful social interactions for anyone and everyone. We think this is very important. It is also a place where people who love to dance can go with their communities to do what they love easily. It doesn’t require more than a couple of gold coins. Dance-O-Mat helps make dance accessible for more people.  

And, it brings life and energy to parts of our city that are in dire need of just that, still, 11 years after the earthquakes. And, it helps put our city of Ōtautahi Christchurch on the map. People bring their visitors from out of town to use it. We think it is an essential part of the 03 and we need your help to keep it that way. 

Who's behind Dance-O-Mat?

Us! We are Gap Filler, creators of Dance-O-Mat (and many many other things). We are a small team of creative placemakers based in Ōtautahi Christchurch. We’re a social enterprise and work locally, nationally and internationally (pandemics notwithstanding!)

We got our start in 2010 post-quake initiating and enabling more than 200 varied and different creative place-based community projects in response to the disaster (think: Cycle-Powered Cinema, Think Differently Book Exchange, Pallet Pavilion, Sound Garden, Super Street Arcade, the Placemaking at One Central Programme featuring #chchswing, Detour pump track and more…). 

 We operate at the crossroads of community development, urban design, art and public intervention. We use all these means to explore how to involve and engage people in creative ways to shape and reimagine the places where they live to make our communities healthier and better. 

We make unique and place-specific creative events, interactive installations and other sorts of interventions to grow a sense of identity and make places more exciting, sociable and diverse. We use these experiences to inform an urban strategy and placemaking consultancy. 

Thank you so much for your support!