Workshop Offers Youth Inspiration At Museum

Workshop Offers Youth Inspiration At Museum

Twenty-five young Māori and Pasifika performing arts students go behind closed doors at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand this week to create stories from treasured objects.

The students will be working with Pacific performing arts company The Conch to bring objects to life in a unique way.

The workshop is a partnership between The Conch, Te Papa and Whitireia’s Māori and Pacific Island Performing Arts Programme and is part of The Conch’s youth development programme Conchus Youth.

The three-tiered programme works with young people to harness the talent and energy of youth, build youth awareness and instil self confidence.

The Conch artistic director Nina Nawalowalo says the Whitireia students, aged 18-25 years, are already on a pathway in the performing arts and The Mana Taonga Project with Te Papa will further their skills and develop their storytelling and devising skills.

“We look at how objects gain significance when they are in a relationship with people. We’ll be going into the Te Papa collection and curators will be selecting their favourite objects and telling stories about them.”

Students will work with objects in the museum and will also have opportunity to bring in their own taonga (treasure) to inspire their stories. The workshop explores the past, present and future relationships to treasured objects.

“Taonga from the past is part of our cultural heritage, but we also have our taonga now which will be the future cultural heritage.

“A major outcome of the workshop is instilling belief into students of their own mana and that they themselves are taonga.”

The week-long workshop ends with a public performance on Friday 20 May at 3.30pm at Te Marae at Te Papa. Entry is free and people are invited to stay afterwards for the fono (discussion).

ENDS

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