It’s a wrap

The bunting has been bundled away, the weather almost held for the duration, and most of the organising committee and, we suspect, our guests are now winding down after an intense and stimulating weekend. This post is mostly for those of you who attended: thank you for making the trip down, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed hosting you, listening to your presentations and talking with you. Everyone’s thanks to Stella Lange, for offering to host, rounding up the team and wrangling us and the Otago Polytechnic crew, who were terrific.

Warm thanks to our speakers. We began both days with keynotes: on Saturday morning,   CTANZ stalwart Jane Malthus shared with us the depth and breadth of her knowledge and research expertise in talking about 19th century dress activism, particularly in New Zealand. Sunday’s speaker, Te Papa’s Nina Tonga, delighted and moved us as she recounted the more recent fashion activism of the Pacific Sisters, from their beginnings to the exhibition Nina recently curated for Te Papa (good news: it’s going to tour).

Thanks too, of course, to all our other speakers, who make the symposium possible, for  giving their time to offer us considered their many and varied approaches to the topic, noting especially those who came from outside New Zealand, Mercedes Pardo, from Colombia and Michael Marendy from Australia. Also to the artists who shared their skills in the Unbound exhibition and the symposium pop-ups – we look forward to seeing Angela Rowe’s project.

That’s all from Symposium 2018. The symposium page will imminently be archived and replaced with a placeholder for the 2019 Symposium, venue and dates to be confirmed. Until next year…haere ra.