Welcome to the artist videos page for the Create1World Interactive Podcast! Watch the videos that are linked below, pick one or more artists whom you’d like to ask a question or questions of, then send us your questions! Questions can be sent either in written format or as an audio file. As with the broader Create1World competition, this opportunity is open to 12-18-year-olds who are resident in Aotearoa New Zealand.
If that’s you, send in your questions by email on cre8oneworld@gmail.com or by FB messenger @create1world, or hop into our DMs on Twitter @team1world or IG @create1world This competition closes on March 31, 2022.
To enter, please state your first name and school or town, then ask your questions! (We don’t want your surname.) (Or, if you are really feeling shy, you can ask to be anonymous – we still need your first name and school or town in case you win a prize, but you can ask for your podcast question to be anonymous!)
By sending us a question you give us permission to use it in the Create1World Interactive Podcast. Just let us know if you want it used anonymously.
The best news of all: there are cash prizes for great questions! We have a total of one thousand dollars to give away! Ten prizes of $100 each will be awarded for original, curious questions that show you are genuinely interested in learning about creative activism and global citizenship. We also have a great Massey University prize pack up for grabs – a quality backpack, full of Massey merch.
You can ask as many questions of as many artists as you like, as long as you send them all in by March 31. Every question gives you another chance to win a prize.
Artist Videos
Our first video is from visual artist and DJ, Taupuruariki Whakataka Brightwell (Ariki). https://youtu.be/z8oE225_BLw
Ariki is an Indigenous pop-culture artist of Māori, Rarotongan and Tahitian descent, now based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She makes amazing murals and light sculptures that celebrate her cultural heritage, as well as awesome cute hoodie designs inspired by a Pacific twist on comic book style. She also spins a mean disc as an in-demand reggae DJ! Ariki’s artwork has been displayed throughout Aotearoa and her most recent piece is Tūmoremore, a three-metre-high taniwha sculpture for Te Tairāwhiti Arts festival.
Our second video is from novelist Dr Laura Jean McKay. https://youtu.be/8WsHDTGsTII
Laura Jean is the author of The Animals in That Country (Scribe 2020), winner of the 2021 Arthur C Clarke award for best science fiction novel of the year and Victorian Premier’s Literary Award 2021, and on the ‘best books of 2020’ lists of Booktopia and The Guardian. Laura Jean is a lecturer in creative writing at Massey University and the ‘animal expert’ presenter on ABC Listen’s Animal Sound Safari (Australia). Described as a ‘game-changing, life-changing novel,’ The Animals in That Country takes us into a bold fictional world where animals and humans can communicate and asks us what the consequences of that are for human arrogance in our current world. Laura is also the co-designer, with Ingrid Horrocks, of Massey University’s Eco-Fictions course, which explores the relationships between creative writing and ecological concerns, covering a range of contemporary forms from eco-fictions, nonfictions, and poetry, to nature writing and animal stories.
Our third video is from poet Annabel Hawkins. https://youtu.be/viH4JuhRDyg
During university Annabel started a poetry blog that went on to become a sell-out poetry anthology, This must be the place. Described by reviewers as ‘breath-taking’ and ‘inspired,’ This must be the place explores the vulnerability of young people grappling with challenges of friendship, self-esteem, and belonging in an uncertain world. The poetry contrasts everyday details of attending to the small grind of flatting, studying, and family with the background anxiety of living in a world where nothing – relationships, jobs, the climate – is guaranteed. From its success, Annabel set up her own freelance creative business and has worked in Los Angeles, Melbourne, and Morocco, among other places. She is the creative copywriter for Aotearoa natural skincare brand Girl Undiscovered (her poetry is on every product), has helped make an award-winning documentary with an Oscar-winning director, and has helped run the NZ International Comedy Fest. She also continues to write and publish poetry, at https://annabelhawkins.com/
Our fourth video is from climate activist Jenny Haycocks. https://youtu.be/gbE2DWB8YXU
Jenny is a full-time volunteer and creative visionary activist with Extinction Rebellion UK. She lives in Norfolk, England. In XR, Jenny works in movement building, movement support, and public actions, which she coordinates at local and regional levels. She also works at national levels through circles that meet to develop regenerative and visionary cultures. Jenny crafts bird and animal costumes from found and recycled materials for use by groups of people in XR actions and, using her background in psychology and qualification and experience as a further education teacher, dancer, and somatic movement educator, leads site-specific performance art, including choreography and singing, so that those actions send messages of peaceful, collective, creative protest. The performances add a joyful visual spectacle and the costumes help signal that responding to the climate crisis requires an alliance of the human and nonhuman worlds and a tapping into creative visions of how we might think and feel differently about our place in ecology. Jenny’s video was filmed and edited by abie raynsford.
Our fifth video is from filmmaker Dr Kefaya Diab. https://youtu.be/tf-nmbaJUTs
Kefaya is a Jordanian scholar of Palestinian origin who is currently researching creative activism at Indiana University in the United States of America. She makes films about activist movements in the Arab world and about social justice issues such as gender and anti-racism. She is happy to answer your questions about filmmaking and show how even with simple equipment, good storytelling can make a difference to the world. Kefaya says “I heard lots of voices in my childhood through my adulthood, caution me of my desire to change the world, ‘one crazy person can’t change the world,’ they used to say. Yet, I always carry with me a statement that a Lebanese musician, Ziad Al Rahbani once said ‘Those crazy ones who believe that they can change the world, are the the ones who will'”. You can see more about Kefaya and her activist filmmaking at her website https://kefayadiab.weebly.com/ – or click her photo above to go to her Create1World intro video and hear about how she got started making films for social justice, and her invitation to you to ask her questions.
Our sixth video is from actor Ashleigh Williams. https://youtu.be/6y8uNhfQ_nQ
Ashleigh is an Afro-Kiwi, originally born in South Africa, who studied acting but dabbles in many other art forms. She is part of the MEDUSA Collective which set up the WeToo collaborative space for mutual support among likeminded artists in a safe space. Along with the WeToo project, Ash is involved in theatre and interested in making work around challenging conversations and change. Click her photo above to go to her Create1World intro video and hear about how she stays hopeful, why creativity is vital to her, and her invitation to you to ask her questions.
Our seventh video is from poet Rogelio Guedea https://youtu.be/hkHQq0SBH9Y
Rogelio is a Mexican New Zealander, and the author of more than fifty books including poetry and essay collections, novels, and translations. He has translated the work of 40 New Zealand poets into Spanish. Rogelio has received a string of national and international poetry prizes including the Adonáis International Prize for Poetry in 2008 for his book Kora (he was the first Mexican poet to win the Adonáis prize), the Rosalía de Castro International Poetry Prize in 2001 for his book Mientras olvido, and Mexican National Poetry Prizes in 2005 and 2004 for his books Fragmento and Razón de mundo. He is also an accomplished researcher into the relationship between poetry and activism, having completed a thesis on social and revolutionary poetry under 20th Century Latin American dictatorships. He has also won a Fullbright award, among many more accomplishments. Click Rogelio’s photo above to go to his Create1World intro video.
How to be part of the podcast:
Need more detail on how to participate? There’s an overview of the podcast competition here: https://sites.massey.ac.nz/expressivearts/2020/12/29/introducing-the-create1world-summer-interactive-podcast-competition/ and there are more detailed participation instructions here: https://sites.massey.ac.nz/expressivearts/how-to-participate-in-the-create1world-summer-interactive-podcast/
If you have any questions please feel free to get in touch with us at cre8oneworld@gmail.com
Acknowledgements
As well as thanking our wonderful artists for sharing their wisdom, we want to say a big thank you to the Wellington City Council Creative Communities Scheme for their contribution to Create1World, which helps us pay the fantastic artists who will appear in our podcast to answer your questions, and to the Massey University College of Humanities & Social Sciences and the New Zealand Centre for Global Studies, who have supported us from the beginning.
