At home she feels like a tourist

City of Wellington, From the album New Zealand scenery: Wellington to the Wairarapa., mid 1870s, Wellington, by James Bragge. Te Papa (O.032418)

At home she feels like a tourist

In October 2026, here at Antistatic we started Field Trip Friday, an experiment that leans into the fact that Friday afternoons can easily be whiled away staring at a monitor not getting much done. Instead, we started logging off at lunch time on a Friday to go on an adventure in or around our respective cities. The theory was that these hours weren’t being used very well anyway, so any inspiration and fun we encountered was only going to be good for us (and the business). Field Trip Friday has two rules: “no errands” and “do something arts or culture related”. Beyond that, it’s been up to each of us what we do and how ambitious each week’s trip is. 

Here’s five things we’ve learned from this new(ish) ritual:

The more you look, the more the city opens up to you. When you’ve lived somewhere for years, the places you go often solidify into a routine, even if there’s some variability in the day-to-day. On Field Trip Friday we’ve both gone to places that have been on our to-do lists and sought out places and experiences we didn’t know existed. We’ve done self-led architecture tours, wandered through publicly accessible buildings and hard-to-find shopping arcades and bookbinding museums. Each new wall text we read or tour we take deepens our understanding of the places we live. It’s a reminder that there is so much waiting to be discovered, even in the seemingly mundane. 

Our productivity and ability to meet deadlines hasn’t decreased. Our client workload generally ebbs and flows during the year, but even during busy periods we’ve managed to structure our time to keep Field Trip Friday going. We’ve made occasional exceptions for important meetings, but do our best to protect this time in our calendars. 

The curiosity bleeds into the rest of your life. Some of our favourite exploring over the past 6 months didn’t actually happen on a Friday, but the vibe of FTF is contagious and can spill into the rest of your week. Since we started, Anna has been on guided tours of the art of Government House, the Durie Hill Elevator in Whanganui and Peter Jackson’s WWI plane collection in Wairarapa. Kelly’s birthday celebration this year rallied a group of friends to trek across San Francisco on the Crosstown Trail. We’ll stop and read the signs that are peppered around the city with historical information that we’ve often passed by. It’s been a reminder to be curious in our day-to-day. 

Field Trip Friday takes effort. Following the rules of Field Trip Friday is easier said than done. In practice, you have to try quite hard not to sneak in errands when you’re out and about if there’s a haircut or vaccination on your list of to-dos. It’s also surprisingly hard, in Wellington at least, to find a new place to go each week when it seems like you’ve explored every museum in a 100 mile radius. One thing that has helped is remembering that Field Trip Friday is part of our work, not just a long weekend. It’s also good to chat about our outings each week as a form of accountability. It’s also been great to get recommendations from friends about places to check out. 

Experiments don’t have to last forever. Over the past month or so, we’ve both been getting worse at doing Field Trip Friday. We’ve been loosey goosey about what counts as arts and culture (and not necessarily in a good way) and Anna has been sneaking in physio appointments between gallery visits. Since we check in regularly about what we did on Field Trip Friday, we’ve had the chance to discuss whether it’s time to get re-dedicated to the ritual, or if it’s served its purpose for now in this format. We’re still not sure, but we do know that we’ll be exploring the places we live in a new light from now on.

L-R: biplane in the 1914-18 Aviation Trust collection at the Hood Aerodrome in Wairarapa; in the tunnel leading to Whanganui’s Durie Hill Elevator; view from the Oakland-San Francisco ferry en route to a museum; video installation at Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings at BAMPFA.