Being a New Zealander

Being a New Zealander

Wednesday 13 February, 7pm Museum Auditorium $15 And $10 Members, Prepaid Bookings Highly Recommended 09 306 7048 Or Bookings@Aucklandmuseum.Com (Unpaid Tickets Will Not Be Held After 6.40pm)

Panelists are: James Griffin, Rod Oram, Jo Randerson, Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal and Gilbert Wong.

The Council for the Humanities awards two Humanities Awards each year to winners of their writing competition for Year 12 and 13 secondary school students. In 2007 the topic was “Being a New Zealander ….” The Award is sponsored by New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO, the Royal Society of New Zealand and Te Whāinga Aronui: The Council for the Humanities. As the New Year begins, the Institute has invited a group of thinkers/writers to discuss this concept further. The panel discussion will be held in association with the RSNZ who have sponsored Jo Randerson’s appearance and Gilbert Wong will facilitate.

Phoebe Harrop, one of the two Humanities Award winners, wrote, “I like to think of New Zealanders as making up one giant patchwork: each section of material is a different ancestry that maintains its pattern, but is stitched to other cultures with the thread of shared “kiwi” values. The result? A marvellous, intricate, diverse and simply beautiful quilt.”

Auckland Museum Institute panel discussion in association with Auckland Museum and the RSNZ.

Panelists:

On the panel are:

James Griffin, Head Writer South Pacific Pictures and one half of the creative pair/force behind the award-winning Outrageous Fortune television series. In 2007 he won the Air New Zealand Screen Award for Best Script Drama/Comedy for the Series 2, Outrageous Fortune Christmas Special. This same episode also won Best Script at the 2007 Qantas Television Awards. James has been a scriptwriter since 1985. In 1994 and 1995 James was Head of Development at South Pacific Pictures and until 1998 was retained by them as a Development Consultant, overseeing the initial script development of such projects as the Maori supernatural drama series Mataku. From May 2004 to the start of 2008 he was also Head of Development at South Pacific Pictures.

Rod Oram, has more than 30 years’ experience as an international financial journalist. In the 2004 Qantas Media Awards, he was a triple winner as Newspaper Columnist of the Year and Magazine Feature Writer of the Year (both in the business category) and recipient of New Zealand Trade & Enterprise’s Travel Scholarship in recognition for his writing on NZ innovation. He is currently a columnist for the Sunday Star-Times, a regular broadcaster on radio and television, a frequent public speaker on business and economic issues, and an occasional correspondent for the Financial Times of London. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the New Zealand Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Unitec. He published his first book in 2007, Reinventing Paradise in which he talks about how New Zealand can become mobilised to "earn a bigger, sustainable living in the world economy".

Jo Randerson is best-known as an actor and theatre worker. She has been Burns Fellow at the University of Otago, and in 1997 she received the Sunday Star Times Bruce Mason Award for playwriting. She is the author of several books and numerous plays and has also been widely published in literary journals such as Sport, Landfall and Glottis, and anthologies, including The Picnic Virgin (VUP, 1999). Jo is one of six emerging New Zealand writers who have been short-listed for the $65,000 International Institute of Modern Letters Prize 2008 to be announced in March.

Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal (B.Mus(Hons), M.Phil, PhD) is a composer, writer and researcher and has written and/or edited five books (on Māori song poetry, research and tribal history) and in 2001 was New Zealand Senior Fulbright Scholar where he conducted research into indigenous worldviews in the United States (Hawai'i and New Mexico) and Canada. In October 2004, Charles took up a research residency at the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy. Charles belongs to the Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Tamaterā and Ngā Puhi peoples and holds degrees from Victoria University of Wellington and Massey University.

Gilbert Wong, is a senior journalist, until recently an editor and senior feature for New Zealand's largest daily newspaper, The New Zealand Herald. He has received many awards recognising his journalism including best single feature, best feature writer and best computer feature in the 1995 Qantas Media Prizes and the NZ Association of Scientists' national prize for science journalism in 1992, 1993 and 1995. In 1994 he was selected as New Zealand's participant in the 1994 US Fulbright Journalism Exchange and spent three months studying the American Newspaper industry while based at the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was a contributor to the book Unfolding History, Evolving Identity: THE CHINESE IN NEW ZEALAND, edited by MANYING IP (2003)

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