Weta Workshop

Our school staff visited Weta Workshop this afternoon to meet with Richard Taylor (I mean Sir Richard Taylor).  He began by talking about the development of Weta and the movies Weta have been involved in making.  But most interesting was a discussion about creativity, how to encourage and develop creativity in children, and the creative people who work at Weta. The emphasis was on artistic creativity (not something I possess) but the ideas could apply to other types of creativity such as writing or scientific inventions. When he employs kids (his words not mine) he looks for four things, the top three being passion, enthusiasm and tenacity, followed by talent. Many young people have talent but he believes they need the other three characteristics to succeed.

School groups and others sometimes do a tour of the workshop but they are finishing a highly confidential project - The Hobbit? - so we had to stick to the conference room off the entrance foyer.  Not many conference rooms are as interesting as that one however.  A glass cabinet stretches the length of one wall and it is chock full of collectibles such as Lord of the Rings miniatures. There is also an impressive collection of industry awards including the Oscars and BAFTAs shown in the photo below.

Art Unveiling at Amesbury

A magnificent piece of art was unveiled during a ceremony at school today.  The art work was commissioned by the building consortium and gifted to Amesbury School. The work, by artist and sculptor Jeff Thomson, is made of corrugated iron. The outline shape is New Zealand but it is made of many small parts in the shape of meccano pieces printed with illustrations of flora and fauna of New Zealand.  It was interesting to talk to Jeff afterwards about how he creates his works. The printing, similar to screen printing, is done onto flat pieces of metal that are then corrugated and assembled.  It was a lengthy process to make the individual 'meccano' pieces but only took two days to assemble the whole 'country'.

 Now I know why Jeff came to the library yesterday to request a map of New Zealand.  They were attaching the art to the wall and needed to make sure that the islands were positioned correctly. 

Detailed view of the pieces. The corrugation and overlapping give the work a wonderful 3-D look. 

Part of the ceremony included the boys performing the haka for the first time. 

They were fantastic - loud and enthusiastic. 

Museum Visit

Today I was a tourist in my own city. Actually it stills feels strange to think that Wellington is my home now and although the Northern suburbs are very familiar I still feel like a tourist when I go into the central city. Today my mother and I were tourists as we visited the Museum of Wellington City & Sea. It's a collection of some important, quirky, tragic and interesting items and records of Wellington's history. Mum was particularly interested to see the Wahine disaster display and documentary.

Something that I found funny was the account of the first car journey in NZ and how it ended:

Cars first arrived in New Zealand in 1898. They were imported by William McLean, a Wellington businessman and politician, who bought two of them in Paris. One he named Lightning, the other Petrolette. On his inaugural drive he set off along Kent Terrace, one of Wellington's widest and straightest streets. McClean failed to take the first bend and crashed into the Basin Reserve fence.

The most fascinating display was probably the holographic telling of a Maori legend. The holographic characters looked so real - like miniature people performing on stage. The little boy beside me was genuinely perplexed about where the narrator had gone when she appeared to disappear into thin air on the stage. The video below is from YouTube. It flickers a bit and you don't really get a feel of how real the 3D images looked but it gives you an idea of what it was like.

Easter

The first 9 days of April, and heading into mid-autumn, have been the best weather-wise in the three months since I moved to Wellington. The weather forecasters predicted bad weather over most of Easter but they were completely wrong and Wellington has sparkled under blue skies.

We celebrated the end of the first term at Amesbury School by going out to dinner at a restaurant at Queens Wharf. We watched a Cook Strait ferry arrive as a full moon emerged over the harbour at dusk - beautiful.

On Good Friday I spent an hour and a half at Wellington airport catching up with a friend who had a stopover on her way back to Australia after a visit to Christchurch. For once I was happy about a flight delay as her plane departed Wellington half an hour later than scheduled and we fitted in a little more chat time.

I went up to Raumati South yesterday for some family and chocolate time. Alison and I hid 59 little Easter chocolates around the deck area for Zak and her partner's son Bronson to find. The final tally was one chocolate to the dog, 56 chocolates to the boys and two chocolates still missing because we couldn't remember where we hid them all. Oh well, 56 chocolates was more than enough, especially as Zak had already demolished most of a large chocolate rabbit after his bowl of cereal at breakfast time.

After some backyard badminton and a fresh from the tree, crunchy apple each (a token gesture at something nutritious) we headed down to the beach. I shivered just at the thought of the water temperature but the others, all hardier souls than I, went swimming, while I enjoyed people watching and the view. The South Island was clearly visible in the distance and from Raumati Beach there is a beautiful view up and down the coast and across to Kapiti Island.

Ears gone, five minutes later only legs left.

Powerless At Amesbury

Our 21st century school which is so reliant on technology was powerless for most of today. It was a dull morning anyway with low cloud hanging over the hills but I thought it strange that the reception area was so dark when I entered the school. When I flicked on the light switch in the library and nothing happened I realised there was a power cut. The school was strangely quiet until the children arrived at 8:30. There was no background hum of computers and other machines. The coffee machine stood idle and a couple of coffee addicted staff members drove to Johnsonville to bring hot drinks back for everyone. The power was off in most of Churton Park and while I was supervising road patrol I helped a neighbour lift her garage door so she could get her car out of the garage.

There was a quick re-plan for the start of the school day, which ended up being a complete re-plan as apart from a brief return of the electricity mid-morning we were without power until 2pm. So it was back to pencils, paper and books for the day. The iPads, iPods, interactive whiteboards and touchscreens were abandoned as good old fashioned handwriting and drawing on paper was used. No books could be issued from the library although I set up a fun treasure hunt type of activity so the seniors could practice some library skills.

The biggest challenge of the day was going to the toilet. The staff toilets were pitch black, you couldn't even see your hand in front of your face. At least I already knew where the toilet roll and hand basin were as the only way to find anything was by groping around in the dark.

Staff Toilet

School Library Blog

I haven't posted anything on this blog for a over a week because I've spent the past few days setting up a school library blog. Some of the girls were busy at lunchtime today finishing book reviews to post on the blog.

Shelves At Last

The library shelves have finally arrived! Well, most of them have. After a six week wait the shelves arrived at school this morning and installation began - only to discover that several of them were missing! Fortunately the installer hadn't sent the original incorrectly painted shelves back to the manufacturer yet. They are sitting in his shed so he was able to retrieve some and they will be installed temporarily until that problem is sorted. At least the non-fiction books will have something to sit on other than the floor. The mobile picture book shelf isn't quite right either and nor is the proportion of sloping display shelves to flat shelves. Ahhhh! Who knew that shelves could be quite so complicated? One good thing is that the kids are excited to see shelves in the library. We almost appreciate a few pieces of wood more than iPads and touchscreen computers at the moment.