Late one night in 1982, a man walked out into the Christchurch cold with a bucket of paste, a brush, and a bundle of posters. No plan beyond the morning. No roadmap beyond the music.

That man was Jim Wilson. And what followed was four decades of going against the tide.

The first manager of The Exponents. The man Flying Nun Records founder Roger Shepherd credited with creating the Christchurch live music scene that fostered the first wave of groups on the label. Jim built infrastructure that let creative arts breathe. He lobbied councils, negotiated legal poster space, and turned a guerrilla paste-up operation into the country's longest-running and largest street media business.

He was a prolific writer, a relentless traveller, a connector of people and ideas. He created the globally popular Café Reader. He flew poets to New York. He pasted Kiwi poems on lampposts in Mississippi.

Jim had a simple belief that the good stuff deserves to be seen.

He spent his life making sure of it.