Category Archives: Wellington

Expressive Arts at Massey Wellington campus

Create1World Moving to Electronic Conference

Kia ora koutou, because your health and safety is our top priority, we will not be proceeding with a physical gathering for Create1World this year.

However, we’ve always had a cutting-edge electronic component to the conference – and we think it is still very important and inspirational to hear from, and support, the voices of our artists at this time.

So we’re working on a plan to expand the electronic part of the conference so that you can still get access to great creative activism wisdom from wherever you are. We’ll keep you posted.

We are also still happy to accept your entries to the competition. We believe creativity is an important way to process everything that is happening. However, the electronic version that you send us will be your judged entry – there will be no live finals.

Please keep an eye on our Facebook page for updates: https://www.facebook.com/create1world/

Stay safe and stay creative. ❤️

Create1World 2020 Competition Now Open!

Calling all creative rangatahi! We know you have great ideas about how to make the world a better place. Turn them into a short film, poem, story, song or piece of theatre, and you could win cash prizes.  Check out http://sites.massey.ac.nz/expressivearts/create1world-2020/  for all the details of the 2020 Create1World Competition.  It’s NOW OPEN and you have until June 2, 2020 to get your entries in.

 

Create1World – an antidote to climate grief

Activist/panellist Zimbabwean-Kiwi Makanaka Tuwe at the 2016 Create1World event.

Activist/panellist Zimbabwean-Kiwi Makanaka Tuwe at the 2016 Create1World event.

Climate grief and climate anxiety are real for this generation, say organisers of a Massey University event bringing together youth to share creative ideas and solutions to the climate crisis.

Hundreds of secondary school pupils will converge at Create1World conferences at Massey’s Auckland and Wellington campuses this month to take part in workshops, online and live panel discussions as well as view performances by poets, film-makers and musicians. The aim of the event, now in its fourth year, is to inspire and foster hope among young people in the face of daunting global issues confronting humanity, from climate change impacts to poverty, deforestation, plastic pollution and social inequality.

Create1World is hosted by Massey’s School of English and Media Studies and the New Zealand Centre for Global Studies. Co-organisers Dr Hannah August and Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley say many young people they have spoken to during the year are feeling angry and frustrated.

“Climate grief is real and it has many of them in the grip of fear and anxiety,” Dr Tilley says. Taking action “is a logical and healthy response to feeling frustrated and disempowered, which is just one of the many reasons why the school strikes are so important,” she says.

“Creative action is also an important form of response. It can be accessible to more people – not everybody is able to participate in a protest march – and it can help process emotional responses through catharsis or inspiration.”

Winners of the Create1World Activism and Global Citizenship competition will be announced at each of the conferences (Wellington on November 14 and Auckland on November 21). Finalists’ work includes slam poetry, music, theatre, a poem in te reo Māori, and speeches on topics ranging from refugees and climate change to sexual consent.

Professor Chris Gallavin (left) with Fatimah Khan, from Newlands College, reading her creative writing in 2018. She is a finalist this year too.

Professor Chris Gallavin (left) with Fatimah Khan, from Newlands College, reading her creative writing in 2018. She is a finalist this year too.

Art to displace fear
Dr August says using creativity to channel fear and concern about pressing global issues helps by bringing a human focus and increasing awareness. “Art and creativity can make a difference both to the person doing the creative work and to the audience they share it with.”

Wellington highlights include creative activist Waylon Edwards, of Whakatōhea, Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāi Tai and Ngāti Hine, and Diane Wong, who will beam in live from New York via an interactive video feed to talk about her work with Chinatown Art Brigade, an intergenerational cultural collective that uses the power of art to advance social justice.

Wellington-based actor, musician, writer and director Moana Ete, of Ngai Tahu and Samoan descent, and Abhishek Majumdar, an environmental and human rights playwright who will participate via a live feed from the United Arab Emirates, will also be on panel discussions.

Wellington attendees will also be treated to a Climate Change Theatre Action demonstration performance by Massey University Expressive Arts students.

Workshops at Wellington include feminist media making with Dr Claire Henry, broadcast skills with Ilja Herb, performance poetry with Dr Tilley, and creative nonfiction with Associate Professor Ingrid Horrocks, all staff members in the School of English & Media Studies.

Highlights for Auckland are Robbie Nicol, aka White Man Behind a Desk, who makes videos for social media to raise political awareness and engagement, and Alice Canton, an award-winning theatre director known for her work using theatre to tell the stories of Auckland’s Chinese community. Workshops by Massey’s award-winning creative writers and theatre practitioners, including Professor Bryan Walpert, Dr Jack Ross, Dr Rand Hazou and Stuart Hoar, are also on the agenda.

Secondary school pupils or teachers interested in attending Create1World are invited to register now, on: http://sites.massey.ac.nz/expressivearts/2019/03/06/create1world-2019/

or check Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/create1world/

#create1world

Creating waves, performing change: Climate Change Theatre Action Aotearoa 2019

Key dates of Climate Change Theatre Action AotearoaPresented by the Wellington Creativity in the Community class of 2019, Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA) Aotearoa 2019 – Ngaru Ngaru – is a multi-disciplinary fusion of theatre, performance art and practical action on climate change.

CCTA Aotearoa 2019 is part of the global Climate Change Theatre Action movement led by The Arctic Cycle, the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, and Theatre Without Borders. CCTA is a worldwide series of readings and performances of short climate change plays presented biennially to coincide with the United Nations COP meetings.

Our CCTA Aotearoa event features four official Climate Change Theatre Action 2019 plays: Abhishek Majumdar’s ‘The Arrow’; Jordan Hall’s ‘The Donation’; Matthew Paul Olmos’ ‘Staring her Down’ and Stephen Sewell’s ‘The Reason’. The programme also features a zero-waste, anti-fast-fashion-inspired performance art promenade piece utilising litter found on our campus. Plus, two brand new devised performance poetry and movement works in which Māori and non-Māori students are working together to express how learning from Indigenous Māori values of spiritual connectedness with land, and kaitiakitanga (guardianship), can help us all reconceptualise the path forward for transforming the way we live.

Our event acknowledges the Te Reo Māori (Indigenous language) concept of ‘Ngaru Ngaru’, which translates roughly as ‘Riding the Wave’ or ‘Surfing the Wave’, but could also imply ‘Being the Wave’. Ngaru Ngaru is the third iteration of Massey University School of English & Media Studies at Wellington’s creative response to climate change. In 2015 we delivered ‘Waves’, starting ripples of climate change conversation and action within the community. In 2017 we followed up with ‘Still Waving’, to inspire our audiences that there is still hope in addressing the effects of climate change – things are dire, but we are not drowned yet.

This year, with ‘Ngaru Ngaru – Surfing the Wave’, we embrace the idea that now a global wave of people power is building, and there is a groundswell of action and hope that we can all find collective strength from. In our commitment to our creative work, we have been inspired by the School Strikes for Climate, Extinction Rebellion and similar groups. We are adding our creative voices to their courageous action, to inspire through arts, performance, and provocative street theatre. Together we are a global wave of change on many fronts.

a global wave of people power is building

As well as being a creative intervention, our event takes practical action by delivering on measurable targets of reducing, reusing, recycling and repairing to reduce our waste and carbon footprint wherever possible. Anything remaining in our calculations we are offsetting with native tree plantings (come to our events and you could get a free kawakawa seedling!).

We are documenting and tracking our carbon reduction efforts in order to develop and test a shareable ‘Carbon Neutral Theatre’ template for other future creative events.

Performances:
– Wednesday October 16, 12.30pm, 5D14 Theatre Laboratory, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa i Te Upoko O te Ika (Massey University Wellington Campus), Aotearoa (New Zealand). The full show with all our CCTA plays plus the devised and performance art works.

– Thursday October 17, 5.30pm, 5D14 Theatre Laboratory, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa i Te Upoko O te Ika (Massey University Wellington Campus), Aotearoa (New Zealand). The full show with all our CCTA plays plus the devised and performance art works. Also features readings from our creative nonfiction class (who have also been working on ecological creativity) plus free vegan pizza for everyone!

– Saturday October 19, various waterfront & CBD locations, including Parliament Gardens, Lambton Quay and Cuba Mall, Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington City), Aotearoa (New Zealand). A selection of our devised and performance art pieces translated into vibrant street performance. (Come for as little or as much as you like! Follow us on Facebook for exact times and locations!)

Follow us at https://www.facebook.com/ngarungaru.ccta/ for more details and updates counting down to Ngaru Ngaru – CCTA Aotearoa 2019. Join us, and be part of the tide of transformation.

Horse Comedy a Trifecta for Massey Playwright

Theatre lecturer and playwright Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley has notched up an artistic trifecta with her third consecutive win at the British Theatre Challenge, this time with a dark comedy about the horse racing industry.

Dr Tilley, from the School of English and Media Studies, has won numerous awards locally and internationally for her plays – often using humour and absurdity to address serious social, ethical and environmental issues. She describes her latest winning short play, titled Fabio the Great, “a hilarious horse-eye view on humanity”.

In it, three horse characters muse on and argue about the perils of their existence while providing an comical, yet insightful, commentary on human behaviour. Fabio is the name of the stallion who spouts platitudes about the thrill of winning and being a champion, despite the pain and risks he endures. His equine companions (a mare and a gelding) urge him to escape before he, too, loses his manhood and fighting spirit to the emasculating scalpel.

The 10-minute play (which won Best Play at Pint Sized Plays New Zealand earlier this year in Queenstown) was one of five winners selected from around 300 entries from around the world for the UK competition run by Sky Blue Theatre Company. Each play will be professionally produced, performed and filmed in London in the first week of October, something Dr Tilley is thrilled about as there a few opportunities to professionally stage short plays in New Zealand.

Dr Tilley, who was winner in 2017 with her play Waiting for Go – about people’s addiction to cars – and in 2018 for Bunnies and Wolves – a reality show critique of the public/private health system, says she likes to use humour to get audiences thinking freshly about issues and aspects of culture that are accepted and taken for granted. Like horse racing.

“The play is a hard punch of anti-animal-cruelty, even to the extent of describing the death toll by over training of two-year-old horses, the brutal medical procedures, the doping to keep an injured horse racing), yet it’s wrapped in the soft glove of character-based comedy,” she says. “There’s actually a lot going on for a 10-minute play that deliberately and disarmingly starts off with an inane fart joke!”

Elspeth Tilley’s award-winning play Fabio the Great uses humour to probe the ethics of horse-racing (photo:Unsplash/Jeff Griffith)

Politics and humour can co-exist

The recognition for the play confirms, she says, that “political work – work that in this case has a strong message about animal rights, with some feminism thrown in for good measure – can win open competitions”.

Not that she is aiming to judge people who like horse racing. Rather, she hopes the play might inspire them to think more critically about the industry beyond the glamour of women dressing up for a race meet in heels, frocks and fascinators, the beauty and speed of the horses and big money to be made as a punter or industry participant. After all, she once had her own part to play – as a student in Australia in her 20s, she earned money to fund her studies working as an actor and model promoting horse racing on the Gold Coast.

Elspeth Tilley’s award-winning play on the dark side of horse racing touches on ideas of why humans feel they are a superior species (photo: Unsplash/Sarah Olive)

Humans vs animals

On a more philosophical note, she says the play touches on ideas of ecological equity, questioning the notion of why humans put themselves at the top of a species pyramid, and the assumed narcissism of seeing ourselves as superior to all other species.

“All three of my works that have made the winners’ list in this competition have been political works – the first one about climate change, the second about public health, and now this one with a strong message against the horse racing industry. To me, this shows that being political doesn’t disadvantage a theatre work in any way –  the works are comedic, but it’s comedy with a message.”

Dr Tilley, who rigorously researched the racing industry and equine welfare before writing the play, says she hopes her success will reassure those of her students who “seem to think that being funny and being political are mutually exclusive. But the long history of political satire shows they are elements that are stronger together.”

Dr Tilley says she’d like to see “a whole new generation of expert satirists – I think it is an increasingly important way to speak truth to power and get people thinking critically. I hope this encourages more young people to use the arts to get their own social justice measures across. It is possible. It works.”

Related articles

Creative activism on the move at Massey
Theatre to provoke new thinking on climate change

 

Reframing Literature Through a Maori and Pacific Lens

A new Massey University course looks set to radically reframe what we traditionally consider in the study of literature.

Novelist and Massey creative writing lecturer, Dr Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi) has created a unique course entitled ‘Oceanic Literatures of Aotearoa: Ngā Tuhinga Kōrero o te Moana Nui a Kiwa.’

The course is being launched for second semester study both on campus and by distance and will allow students to explore customary Māori and Pasifika creation narratives, visual narratives and oral traditions.

Dr Makereti says when considering Aotearoa’s literary past, people tend to think of the first Māori literature as being produced in the 1960s and 1970s. But she says Māori and Pacific cultures were weaving narratives long before English explorers arrived on the scene. “Written literature was never alien to us because our ancestors were already using sophisticated coding built into carving, weaving and ta moko to tell our stories. Our wharenui are libraries of stories built into the walls and into the very faces of our tipuna.”

She says it is time academia acknowledged this visual communication is as much literature as oral and written forms and she believes students, especially Māori and Pacific students, need the opportunity to study the richness of their literary heritage.

“Viewing Māori and Pasifika literatures as a recent development devalues them – we can see this in the lack of courses on this subject available nationally, and the lack of research in this area. By re-contextualising the history of our literatures, I hope to re-energise interest in our contemporary writing too.”

Along with studying pre-colonial literature, students will also look at contemporary Māori and Pasifika stories and poems in English and critically evaluate how cultural and historical bias is embedded in reading and writing.

Full details of the course can be found here and it will commence on July 15.

Related articles

Māori literature deserves academic recognition
Excellence in Māori literature celebrated

Lifetime Achievement Award for Massey Luminary

Great theatre can change minds and lives, says Professor Angie Farrow, who credits her childhood amid the lively antics of her extended family in London’s East End with shaping her dramatic sensibilities.

Farrow, a professor in theatre at Massey, an internationally award-winning playwright and a community arts initiator, recently received the prestigious Lifetime Achievement in Theatre Award at the Manawatū Regional Theatre Awards. It’s the latest in a gamut of prizes she has received over her career, in recognition of her outstanding creative output on topics as diverse as love, death, refugees, the plight of the Manawatū river and Kafka, as well as her commitment to community theatre and her skill and passion in teaching theatre.

A dramaturg and executive producer of numerous community theatre events, including the biennial Manawatū Festival of New Arts, the Manawatū Street Theatre Project and the annual Manawatū Summer Shakespeare, she has won national and international awards for her plays, including The Pen is a Mighty Sword International Playwriting Competition in the US for Despatch in 2007 and Best Drama Script at the Auckland Short and Sweet Festival for Leo Rising in 2014. In 2011 she was awarded for her ‘Outstanding Contribution to New Zealand Drama’ by the Playwrights’ Association of New Zealand.

But, after 23 years at the Manawatū campus as a pioneer in the expressive arts and theatre studies programmes in the School of English and Media Studies, and having recently been promoted to a professor, she is about to exit stage left and down the stairs of the elegantly refurbished Sir Geoffrey Peren Building to Wellington, to embrace a new phase of her life.

Professor Farrow discovered her interest in theatre at age 16, although the seeds were there all along, she suspects. “I grew up in a multi-storey house in the East End of London that was full to the brim with my extended family – my nan and granddad, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters. There were plenty of dramas – fighting, cursing, arguing, celebrating, laughing, partying, which I must have absorbed unconsciously!”

When a brilliant ‘alternative’ drama teacher started teaching in her neighbourhood she went along with a friend who was “too scared to go on her own”.

The teacher introduced them to devised theatre, improvisation and dance drama. “It was like a foreign language to me, but I really took to it. In particular, it gave me a sense of power and, for the first time in my life, I understood how exhilarating it could be to make something from nothing.”

However, her “obsession” with theatre began when she discovered playwriting in her early 20s. “Writing my first play was a pivotal experience because I realised there were worlds and powerful voices inside me that I never knew were there,” says Professor Farrow, who has published five volumes of her short plays for stage and radio.

Theatre is a like a drug

Theatre has always been like a drug, she says. “Most of us who are involved in it see it as an addiction.” And while the process of creating theatre can be exhausting to the point of wanting to give it up at times, she invariably returns to it. “I do believe that theatre can change lives ­– I’ve seen it first-hand hundreds of times. People discover that they are so much more than they imagined. They find deep friendships, they sharpen their sense of integrity; they become politicised; they learn how to express themselves fully through voice, mind and body; they learn about discipline; and how to meet deadlines.”

Political focus

Other accolades include first prize at The Inspirato International Playwriting Contest in Toronto in 2013 for her short play The Blue Balloon, a magical, existential 10-minute play and an example of the power of short plays, or what she calls “haiku theatre where you say big things in small spaces”.

She believes that theatre can be a powerful agent of change for audiences when it addresses political issues without being preachy. “We live in a time when global issues can penetrate every aspect of our lives – we know about the famine in Yemen, the bush fires in Australia, the threat of climate change. Done well, theatre is capable of synthesising these ‘big picture’ realities into narratives that audiences are able to absorb without being overwhelmed.”

Receiving the lifetime award has, she says, humbled, honoured and delighted her. “Theatre is one of the best forms I know to cultivate and enhance community and because it gives me great joy to see people working harmoniously together and with a common purpose.” Over two decades, it also represents the “hundreds of people who have contributed to my experience, my success,”she says.

Teaching is her first love (in 2010 she won a $20,000 national tertiary teaching excellence award), and it is the students she will miss. “Theatre is an intellectually rigorous form, whether students are studying or writing plays or whether they are exploring a character as an actor. All of the courses we teach at Massey attempt to use critical and creative learning and it’s the combination that provides depth and rigour.”

The award has also helped her to focus on what happens next. She hopes to continue her playwriting as well complete an anthology of stories based on growing up in the East End. Mainly, she wants to make space for new things to happen, but right now she isn’t quite sure what those new things might be.

“Massey has been very good to me and has offered a place of discovery, stimulation and support, I will miss being around so many great colleagues and amazing students, but it really does feel time to open a new chapter.”

This year, Massey Community Theatre – made up of students and staff from the University’s varied drama programmes – swept up five awards in all. Firing Line, a piece of street theatre devised, written and performed by Creativity In The Community’s class of 2018, took out both the Best Ensemble and Best Original Script and Production awards. The show’s technical support team, comprised of Luke Anderson, Leith Haarlhoff, Sean Monaghan and composer/Massey artist-in-residence David Downes won the Technical Design and Operation award for their multimedia spectacle, and School of English and Media Studies staff member and technician Luke Anderson won the Gordon Alve Memorial Award in Technical Excellence.

Create1World 2019

Create1World 2019

Nau mai, haere mai. Welcome to the Create1World 2019 Competition and Conference information pages – Join us to create one world through expressive arts and creativity! Hono atu ki te whakataetae Create1World.  Mahi tahi mo te rangimarie.

Massey University invites young people aged 12-18 (or in schooling equivalent to years 7-13) to enter the 2019 Create1World competition, and/or to join us for a fabulous day of creative inspiration including local and international panellists answering your questions, along with performances, workshops and activities. Last year our conferences were rated 8.9 out of 10 by participants on whether they would recommend them to others!

The competition asks you to produce a creative piece that encourages audiences to join together as a global community and solve some of the big problems we face as a planet.  It could be a video, song, poem, short story, speech or theatre performance – your choice – but it must help us think about ways of working collaboratively for the betterment of all humanity. There are cash prizes! Continue reading

Massey University and Square Edge Visiting Writer 2019 – Pip Desmond

Massey University and Square Edge Visiting Writer 2019 to work on Topical True Story

Massey University’s School of English and Media Studies and Square Edge Community Arts are excited to be hosting award-winning nonfiction author Pip Desmond as the Visiting Artist for 12 weeks from March 2019. Desmond will be working on the true story of a family faced with the suicide of their 21-year-old son while in the care of a DHB acute mental health unit.

Say creative writing lecturers, Dr Thom Conroy and Dr Tina Makereti:

“We had 63 applications this year, and we would have liked to support many of these for different reasons. We were lucky to see some very strong projects and writers. However, in the end, Pip’s project emerged as the most compelling and urgent, due to its subject matter. We note that just as we were making our final decision, the media reported the Coroner’s ruling that the young man’s death was avoidable. Though not related to our decision, this news was confirmation that the work Pip Desmond is doing is extremely timely and relevant, particularly to young people and mental health support systems in Aotearoa New Zealand.”

Desmond has an impressive publication record, which includes the New Zealand Post Award-winning Trust: A True Story of Women and Gangs (2010) and The War That Never Ended: New Zealand Veterans Remember Korea (2013). Her latest memoir, Song for Rosaleen, has been longlisted for the 2019 Ockham NZ Book Awards.

Desmond explains about her new project:

“My aim in telling this story is to shed light on issues that deeply affect our society: how we deal with mental illness and our burgeoning suicide epidemic, involvement of families in their loved ones’ care, political responses at district health board and government level, and the tragic pattern of inter-generational suicide created by Māori dispossession.”

While she is resident, Desmond will collaborate with the School of English and Media Studies at Massey University, Square Edge Community Arts and the Palmerston North writing community to share her work and writing experience. She has a particular interest in ethics in creative writing, and presented a TEDxTalk about the topic in Wellington, which can be viewed on YouTube.

We’re also very pleased to announce that our 2020 Massey University and Square Edge Arts Visiting Writer will be New Zealand speculative fiction writer and three time Sir Julius Vogel award winner Octavia Cade. 2020 is a great year to highlight an exciting New Zealand science fiction writer, since Wellington will be hosting the 78th World Science Fiction Convention, CoNZealand.

For more information about Pip Desmond, Octavia Cade, or the visiting artist residency, contact Anne Meredith (email: A.M.Meredith@massey.ac.nz) or Thom Conroy (Phone: +64 6 9517508; email: t.conroy@massey.ac.nz).

Wellington Create1World Workshops

Create1World 2018 – Wellington Afternoon Workshop Options

If you are attending Create1World Wellington, you will be aware that after we have enjoyed our amazing panel, and seen the youth finalists, you get to be hands-on yourself in afternoon workshops.  To ensure you don’t miss out, please pre-select one of the workshop options below by clicking on the link below its description, then providing your name.  Please note, workshops have size limits – if your preferred workshop is full, you will need to return to this page and select another option by clicking a different link. If you have any questions please email us on cre8oneworld@gmail.com  We look forward to seeing you at Create1World Wellington on November 15! On the day, we will have helpers on hand to take you to your workshop room.

Workshop Option 1: Telling Stories through Theatre.

(Size limit 20.)  Room: 5D14

Presented by:  Rachel Lenart. Rachel is an award winning theatre director, most recently seen at Circa theatre with ‘Modern Girls In Bed’, by Cherie Jacobson and Alex Lodge and ‘Constellations’, by Nick Payne. She teaches theatre studies at Massey University with a focus on production training and dramaturgy.

This will be a fun, interactive workshop that will explore techniques of physical storytelling. You will be involved in developing narrative ideas and discovering how theatre can give a simple story new meaning and depth.   No previous experience of theatre is required.

To register for Theatre with Rachel, click here: https://goo.gl/forms/90a7WqZN9rXMp0Kq2

Workshop Option 2: Creative Writing: Your heart is your gate. 

(Size limit 20.)  Room:  5D17

Presented by: Massey University Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Dr Thom Conroy.  Thom is the author of the novels The Naturalist and The Salted Air. He is the editor of a collection of essays, Home. His short fiction has been recognised by Best American Short Stories 2012 and has won other awards. In 2013, he received a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Sustained Excellence in Teaching. He has extensive experience supervising Master of Creative Writing and PhD students in fiction.

Looking inward with clarity and honesty can enhance your capacity to look outward as a compassionate agent of change. In this hands-on creative writing workshop, Thom Conroy will facilitate a process of creative writing and discussion designed to link the concerns and experiences of participants with creating the change they would like to see in the world.

To register for Creative Writing with Thom, click here: https://goo.gl/forms/7zROmS3P4QKhFW1n1

Workshop Option 3:  How to shoot an impactful interview. 

(Size limit 15.)  Room: 5D21

Presented by: Massey University media studies lecturer Costa Botes (multi-award-winning documentary film-maker, who has work that has qualified to be considered at the Oscars!).

Film is a visual medium. Words are not enough. The truth needs creative help sometimes. In documentaries, information is often delivered via a talking head. How that information is received can be influenced by technical and stylistic choices made by the film-maker. Elements like camera angle, camera height, lens size, depth of field, lighting, and subject eye-line can all affect emotional impact.

In this workshop, participants will be shown via practical demonstration how these key elements can be consciously employed and controlled, then get the chance to try them out themselves.

To sign up for Impactful Interviews with Costa, click here: https://goo.gl/forms/krmERW03tzJ5wGcG2

Workshop Option 4: Feminist Media Practice.

(Size limit 30). Room: 5D12

Presented by: Dr Claire Henry. Claire teaches screenwriting and filmmaking in Massey’s digital media production courses. She has written and directed several short films screened in film festivals across Europe and Australia, and in New York. As a film theorist, she also has expertise in genre, national cinema, and the cultural politics and ethics of screen violence.

From the Guerrilla Girls to Who Needs Feminism?, be inspired by the history of feminist media-based activism in zines, posters, billboards, photography, and social media campaigns. Explore how mainstream media play a role in sharing, reinforcing and policing social ideas about gender, and how you can use media as an artistic catalyst for social change. In this workshop, we’ll explore – and attack! – sexism with creative media-based interventions.

To register for Feminist Media Practice with Claire, click here: https://goo.gl/forms/ltAFNj7mb38bxB9I3

Workshop Option 5: Protest Through Performance Poetry.

(Size limit 20). Room: 5C11

Presented by: Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley. Elspeth is an award-winning playwright and passionate advocate of the arts for social change (she’s also your Create1World conference convenor).  She was the storytelling facilitator for Te Hā Tangata human library, and runs a fortnightly community-based creative writing and performance poetry workshop at Te Whare Hupa with Te Hā Tangata graduates.

In this practical workshop you will build confidence, and learn a combination of written and oral skills to craft a compelling piece of performance poetry.  Last but not least, you will get to feel the unrivalled joy of freeing your inner voice for change, and letting it loose in a supportive environment.

To register for Performance Poetry with Elspeth, click here: https://goo.gl/forms/9HBlNICTyafUP48c2

Workshop Option 6: Wikipedia Inclusiveness Editathon.

(Size limit 15.) Room: Wellington Campus Library Room 5B18.

Presented by: Dr Elena Maydell and Barbara Scott. Elena has published widely on cultural and racial stereotypes in the New Zealand media, as well as on how these stereotypes translate into barriers for minority groups. Barbara is your regional Massey recruitment advisor – you may have met her in your school! She’s also the organiser of feminist arts events, including for The Dowse museum.

In the worldwide Wikipedia Editor Survey (2011) of all the Wikipedias, 91% of respondents were male, and the greatest number, or plurality, of editors resided in the United States. We also know that Wikipedia editors tend to be those with sustained access to technology and the internet, and with sufficient income to create ‘disposable’ (leisure) time to spend editing Wikipedia. Your average Wikipedia editor is most certainly not a woman of colour working three jobs to achieve a living wage.

This of course skews the information that is available on Wikipedia, because what is included is what is perceived to be of relevance by the majority of editors.

This “digital blind spot” particularly manifests itself in a gender gap, which makes it difficult for women – and in our case we are interested in female artists and activists — to find their own predecessors. As editor-activist Sierra Carlson has commented, “the danger is that if information is not in the database, people may conclude that the missing information is not notable or valuable”. Editing Wikipedia to add notable women and their achievements thus becomes of itself an act of protest and inclusiveness.

In this workshop, you will learn some basic tools for Wikipedia editing, and be provided with resources about notable women whose achievements are absent or partial on Wikipedia. You will work in teams to start to change that situation.

To register for Wikipedia Editathon with Elena and Barbara, click here: https://goo.gl/forms/JtViEQQlZiTOzsQS2