Balls, Bullets & Boots

Balls, Bullets & Boots

Rugby Remembers

Coming soon, NZ Rugby Museum’s exhibition Balls, Bullets and Boots, is an engaging, interactive multimedia exhibition that looks at the legacy of the First World War, as viewed through the eyes of XV New Zealand rugby players and one woman coach – those from every background, those who served and those who stayed behind, those who came back and those who did not return.

Interactive multimedia stations will allow visitors to engage with the players’ personal stories against a backdrop of the social context of a nation at war. Through this experience they are encouraged to explore the relevance and power of a key metaphor of the time – namely that rugby was considered to be a ‘soldier-making game’ grooming men of the Dominion for warfare.

Ex-All Black captain, Anton Oliver features as the exhibition’s ‘digital guide’ and is demonstrating his support by promoting the exhibition and arrives back in NZ on 9th June to finalise filming at ‘Unitec’ (the project’s creative partner). Oliver is passionate about the need to confront the realities that New Zealand men and women went through during wartime. “I’m interested in this project because it attempts to strip away all of the political, nationalistic rhetoric and describe what really happened to people in the war by telling peoples’ stories.”

The exhibition, based on research undertaken by Clive Akers for an e-book of the same name will be launched alongside the exhibition and will expand on the themes and stories of the players.

The exhibition will be free to view and is hosted by New Zealand’s Rugby Museum in the Te Manawa Complex, Palmerston North from the 22nd August to 11th November 2015 and thereafter touring nationally. For more information, search “Balls, Bullets and Boots Exhibition” on Facebook, or, visit http://www.ww1rugby.nz/about.

ENDS

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