Pecha Kucha Returns To Spark Festival

Pecha Kucha Returns To Spark Festival

Pecha Kucha is like speed-dating… but for creative people with diverse ideas. Wintec journalism student Jess Thorne-George reports…

Ever wanted to know how not to design a submarine in wartime, what it’s like to grow up in the shadow of a quarry or how Albert Einstein’s first visit to Hollywood turned out?

These and other subjects will be covered at Pecha Kucha, a feature of Spark10 – Wintec’s festival of Media, Arts and Design next week.

Pecha Kucha is not a relation to Pikachu the Pokémon, but a creative format for displaying anything from ideas to passions, projects to plans.

Devised in Tokyo in 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network and show their work in public, it is a unique, rapid-fire format in which each speaker speaks for 6 minutes and 40 seconds, while showing 20 images, each for 20 seconds.

Spark Project Manager Susanna Wilford believes Pecha Kucha Night offers the chance to be both entertained and educated.

“It offers an opportunity to hear and meet a cross section of Hamilton’s creative thinkers – you get the chance to have an entertaining evening offering a colourful range of concepts and diverse ideas.”

She believes the use of both vocal and visual elements is a winning combination.

“Pecha Kucha is about having fun and sharing of ideas in a convivial environment. The excitement is in the live performance of the presenters – the succession of fast paced chatter combined with a series of captivating images.”

The name Pecha Kucha was drawn from the Japanese term for the sound of "chit chat",

This year is the third year Pecha Kucha has been incorporated in the Spark Festival.

Presenters include Wintec Media Arts design lecturer David Gardener, Waikato Museum Curator/Concept Leader Visual Art Leafa Wilson, 6Twenty’s Simon and Kat Wade, MWDesign’s Mike Williams, and Intellectual Property Strategist Kate Wilson.

This year’s event will be held on August 10 at the Gallagher Hub on Wintec’s city campus. Doors open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Seats are limited.

ENDS

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