Te Papa's Blog

Rest assured, we in the Discovery Centres are working very, very hard for you. We know that for most children, two weeks away from the blackboard is a thought not worth thinking, and we have a whole slate of great diversions to take your mind off THE THING WE WON’T MENTION. You know, the two weeks without sch…nothing.

And when we say that there is a whole barrel of interesting things going down, we’re not kidding. More than a barrel, there is a fridge stored inside a tanker being hauled by two helicopters, one piloted by a dragon, the other by a fairy princess. One of our holiday highlights has to do with this bro’Town interactive that our hard-working hosts Herbert and Jessica have magicked into being. Have a look:

The new bro'town laughter lines interactive being installed in Inspiration Station (c) Te Papa, 2010

Look at it! Isn’t it magnificent? It looks even better now, because it’s fully operational, wall-mounted and ready for your artistic hard work. Doesn’t that make you feel better about your school-less fortnight? Not enough? How about all the activities we’ve got planned for you? Four Discovery Centre  hours covering a whole range of activities, everything from tī rākau (playing sticks) to Samoan tattooing, to the very important visit of some Very Improtant People, in this case, the cast of bro’Town! A Very Important Reptile will also drop by: a real life, living breathing tuatara. Surely, that’s got to take the edge off the 336 hours you have to endure waiting to be let back into a classroom.

Still not enough? Craft yourself into a frenzy! That will make the 20,160 minutes pass that much more sweetly. You can pick from one of over a dozen craft activities. You like Japanese dolls? Be here on July 3, and we’ll make one together. Maybe you’re like Bruce Wayne – more of a pekapeka person. Well, you’re sorted too. Just be here on July 8, and you can shimmy up a  short-tailed bat mask. What else could you want? Tongan drums? Jandals in July? A completely classy and cleverly cool  Tīpare? A perfectly pretty but perhaps perplexing thaumatrope? Done.

Now, on to the weevil. The New Zealand Schools’ Photographic Competition winners are out and up onto our Discovery Centre walls: brilliant work done by kids who came up with a way to meet the challenge of capturing one of two tricky themes – “Celebrate” or “From the Paddock to the Plate”.

Bryce McQuillian's photographs in the Discovery Centre offices

And to do this, we had to somewhat relectantly take down the astounding close-up photography of Bryce McQuillan. As you can see from what is clearly also a photographic masterpiece here, they have been keeping a low profile in our office.  But even that’s not a problem (unless you don’t like bugs and work in our office, then I suppose it could be a problem).  If it’s close up bugs you want, then just take a trip to NatureSpace on level 2, because we have 28 of them waiting for you to put them under the microscope. Maybe we’ll see you at Te Papa for a few of the 1.2 million seconds you’ll have free this July?