Media release - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Over the next few months the Hokitika Museum team are running public interpretation and ‘Meet the Museum’ workshops with the community. Staff want the museum to be a reflection of the people here on the West Coast and what is important for them, now and the future. The workshops are intended to support the museum to promote West Coast cultural identity and heritage in a future-focussed way.
“The Museum team will be running public interpretation workshops in Westland,” says Museum Director Kararaina Te Ira. “At these workshops local Westland communities will have the opportunity to share what stories they want to see told in the museum and to let us know how the stories will be best represented.
In the Grey and Buller Districts we will be holding workshops called ‘Meet the Museum’. The primary goal of these workshops is to foster warm relationships between the community and the collection held by Hokitika museum that comes from those areas. Building these relationships will allow the community to share the stories of their treasures with us and help us understand how to best present the stories when the pieces are displayed.
The collection held by the Hokitika Museum is not just about the stories of Westland. We hold items in the collection that are from all over the West Coast. These collections provide a holistic overview of the story of the whole West Coast. In hosting these workshops we hope to gain an understanding of all of the communities and what they think is important regarding their cultural identity. We hope that the Westland and wider West Coast will develop a long-lasting connection to the Hokitika Museum and see it as a place that presents their stories and culture to the visiting public.”
Workshops will be held in Hokitika at the Regent Theatre on Monday 17 October from 5.15pm and at Ross Centennial Hall on Wednesday 19 October from 5.30pm. Further workshops will be held throughout Westland during October and November, in Grey District in November and December, and in Buller in early 2023.
ENDS
Media enquiries to:
Emma Rae, Strategy and Communications Advisor
Emma.rae@westlanddc.govt.nz