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Rainbow taonga at Te Papa (2019) [AI Text]

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My name is Stephanie Gibson. I'm a curator of New Zealand histories and cultures. And in my team, we also have Pacific cultures. Curators. So we work together. Stephanie. It was just over three years ago that you and I and, uh, fellow curator Lynette Townsend, uh, were talking about rainbow, uh, LGBTI collections at te Papa. Three years has gone so fast. Um, I'm wondering, can you tell me what new acquisitions in terms of LGBTI Rainbow, Uh, [00:00:30] items you have now at Papa. In those three years, we've been collecting steadily since 2016. And, uh, we've been trying to collect as diversely as possible and with community, um, people. So, for example, we've met with, uh, gender minorities, and we are collecting their most recent sets of posters. So we've, uh, recently acquired their gender diversity posters that were seen in Wellington and all around New Zealand and city streets over the last year. And we're currently [00:01:00] in the process of collecting their, um, their BDMRR bill posters. What is the BDDMR? That's the births, deaths, marriages, relationships, registration, bill. So had Papa had a relationship with gender minorities? A before this, and if not, how did you? How did you develop that relationship? Well, I always take a very gentle approach. So I I began personally by just wandering along to see them and have [00:01:30] a chat and talk about all sorts of matters. And, uh then we became a bit more formal, and then two of us went and had a proper meeting, and, uh, we had a wonderful, another wonderful, um, conversation. And from there it's just grown. So, uh, we identified the posters around town as being really important sort of zeitgeist movement. They're very positive posters about gender diversity, about trans experience. And we felt that that was a real game changer out in public. [00:02:00] And we really wanted to document those posters. And then they they're doing wonderful work which continues on, and we want to keep collecting their work. I imagine you must have to be quite careful being a national institution and approaching um a a community organisation For them not to feel kind of O overpowered. How do you How do How do you, um how do you do that? We take a very gentle approach. We try and start. Basically, [00:02:30] we the ideal is to meet people on their own territory and not make it hard for them. So, uh, working with their hours because a lot of people are part time or they're voluntary. So we try and go to them, and we keep it light and gentle. And we basically want to start a new friendship essentially and that there are no walls between us and that we want to, uh, work with them and work to their strengths and only [00:03:00] if they want to. It's all done with their permission and their desire to be involved. We don't push anything. It's it's not fair on people, so it's very organic. And I guess what you're looking at long term is to be collecting things that will be here forever. Absolutely so we're looking for material that's nationally significant, and it needs to be significant on many levels. So it really needs to speak to, uh, some very [00:03:30] big stories, but also, um, everyday experience as well. And it needs to be compelling, so it needs to have an interesting sort of material and visual uh, aspects. For example, the gender minorities posters are actually beautiful, beautifully designed and very compelling as objects in themselves. Uh, they need to represent, uh, maybe a zeitgeist moment as well. Uh, a turning point in society and culture and history. [00:04:00] Um, sometimes, uh, objects have a very long reach deep into the past, and they can help us understand the past. And they can also help us sort of, uh, almost, uh, provide a road map for the future as well. You know, we need to know where we've been and to help us to to go into the future. So with gender minorities now, what was what was the thing that prompted you to suddenly say, We need this material at Papa when, uh, it's act of Parliament. [00:04:30] It's mandated to represent all New Zealanders, and we don't it because it's we haven't been able to, sometimes because of resources and other competing priorities, and we desperately want to represent all New Zealanders. It's a very genuine it's mandated, but that, of course, requires work. And you've got to actually go out, got to go outside the building and actually form relationships and work alongside people to see what they might want to to do. What do they want to [00:05:00] see in the national collection? It's not all about what I think it's We need to think it all think about it all together. So were you having, um, discussions or working groups before you actually started approaching? Say, gender minorities, uh, or other organisations Did you did you have a kind of a sense of what should be collected? Uh, well, we've got great collections already. Uh, most of our LGBT Q I plus collecting started in the nineties when they were preparing for Papa. So there've been [00:05:30] various curators and various advisory groups and and advisors in the community that have helped us over the years and also LGBT Q I plus members of staff. So it's been this If you looked back into the last 2025 years, you would see lots of work quietly going on. Uh, so it's not like we're doing anything new. We're just building on past work, and it's been, uh, it's been a rich tapestry of involvement. [00:06:00] Uh, and it does. Things do change over time, and new groups flourish, and we form new relationships. Sometimes, uh, they can be people that have approached us or we've approached people. So it's it is a very organic process. What are some of the other things that you've collected over the last three years? We've collected, uh, a fantastic rugby ball assigned rugby ball. So what is significant [00:06:30] about this rugby ball? This is a very exciting object because we have, uh, the we have expected rugby objects in the collection. So we have all black uniforms and we have famous rugby balls from famous matches. But this rugby ball, this is from the first interprovincial gay rugby match. So both teams were comprised of gay players and this happened in 1998 and it was the crazy knights versus the rainbow heroes. [00:07:00] And then all the members of those teams signed the ball and then they presented it to one of the most ardent fan, Alan Bracegirdle. And then recently Alan felt that it needed to come back to New Zealand and go to a good home. And so, uh, through various channels, including yourself, Gareth, um, the ball came here to, and we're very excited because it helps. It helps. Uh, I don't know if the word is disrupt or it modifies that that national story of rugby that you expect to see in a museum, [00:07:30] and it just brings a whole new story in, and it complicates that story. And we think that's a It's a wonderful vehicle to tell other stories. You you were saying 1998. So that's actually very recent, that that that that this game happened, that these teams existed. I know that that's almost It's almost shocking. These most of these people, probably still all alive and still active. Some of them might even be still playing rugby. And it is so recent, and I think some people at the time in 98 had misgivings about having a gay team. Now, why [00:08:00] on earth you still need to have a gay team, but you still need even today you still need safe place, safe places. Uh, you still need to remind people about diversity. Um, so I think the ball is a great symbol of it. Am I right in thinking that Grant Robertson played on this team? Absolutely. He was a big part of the team, and he's spoken about it publicly a lot and how important it was for him. He met his partner in the team playing, [00:08:30] and it's hugely important, and he was a minister of sport. So it's quite wonderful that full circle there for his particular story. So has the rugby ball come to you, uh, covered in dirt? I mean, obviously, it's a used rugby ball. Is it dirty, or have you cleaned it? As far as I know, it's not dirty. It's it's compressed. It's lost its ear, so it will probably need a wee bit of a pump up if we're going to put it on display. But it's been very carefully looked after What else has come into the collections? So we've also been, uh, this year we've [00:09:00] been collecting around trans experiences, So we've worked with a wonderful young Trans man, Will Hanson and collected his transitional objects. So he curated them for us and then wrote about them himself. So that's been a wonderful project and very powerful objects like his chest binders, an empty box of testosterone, Um, and also a quirky objects that might surprise people like a a crown that he was given when he was [00:09:30] crowned by his friends as the king of the king of the ball. So quite a beautiful range of objects, also a little embroidery of his new name will with which his friend embroidered for him. So very touching, very intimate. And a very powerful story about transitioning in New Zealand. And in these days, that must be incredibly special, having such personal objects that are kind of so singular. But but also II, I guess, speak to a lot of people's experiences. [00:10:00] Absolutely. That's our key aim. We can only collect a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fragment of New Zealanders experiences. There's only so much you can collect, so it's very We are very careful and very mindful about collecting a story that can speak to many people. And I think a lot of people will engage with Will's story on many levels. You know, he talks about, uh uh, his body, his, um, changing body and how he coped with, um, anxieties around [00:10:30] that. And a lot of people will respond to that whether or not they're trans. So what will happen with these objects? Will they go on display? Will there Will there be an exhibition At the moment, we are just aiming to get them onto our collections online so that they're virtually accessible. So that's our first aim. And then eventually we would love them to be part of our history. Renewal shows if we get that opportunity, but at the moment we don't have any display ideas firmly organised. But I hope [00:11:00] we can do virtual display. One of the things that's really jumped out to me over the last three years is the development of collections online. Um, I was really fortunate the other day to see online, uh, the photograph albums of Johnny Cross and Frankie L And, uh, yeah, maybe. Could you talk to me about, um, the the the kind of digitization of LGBTI Rainbow collections at Papa? Yes, it's been a great boon to, um, visibility access for researchers. [00:11:30] Collections online is just a marvellous tour, and it's the best thing that could have happened. Really. So our aim is to get everything online with a really good photograph and a good interpretive, what we call a Web summary. So there's lots of information that makers are named that personal stories are told. It's all done with people's permission, of course. Uh, so we're always very careful about consent. What? You know, what we write is, um, the and approved by the people involved and that they give [00:12:00] their full consent. So once they've got got that full consent, then we can celebrate the material and release it online. Uh, the other side of that, of course, is making it easily findable. And we've been doing a bit of work around that and trying to classify our rainbow collections in more appropriate ways and more easily findable ways. And that's quite a mission because our database relies on Northern Hemisphere classification systems, Um, namely the Library of Congress. The [00:12:30] so And they are a little bit, I would say, quite conservative, maybe traditional in their, um, gender terms, particularly around rainbow terms. But we've had a We've had a really good experience this year in digging deep into those the and releasing better terms that better better describe the New Zealand, uh, rainbow experience. For example, we've been able to surface the acronym LGBT, which encompasses a whole lot of other acronyms like LGBT [00:13:00] Q. These the So do not include the word queer or the word rainbow, but they include just about every other term that New Zealanders would be familiar with. So we're just trying to apply the terms as uniformly and as widespread as possible so that researchers and, um, anybody looking for rainbow material hopefully will find it. It's not precise, and it's not perfect, but we are improving it as we go. I think you talked about last [00:13:30] time about even if there isn't a term as such in the that, you can add it to your description. Yes, that absolutely thank you for saying that. So in our Web summaries and their free text, you can put any term you like. So there we can put rainbow and queer, and you're quite right. You can search you. If you search queer, those records will pop up. So it's about being really strategic and really careful in your naming and describing in your in your narratives to make sure that you've got that terminology [00:14:00] coming through. How was that for, um, say, Will's collection coming in? Were there any, uh, things around about? You know, how Will wanted to name things as opposed to what you actually had in your database. That's a really good question. Uh, II, I think, because he's a researcher, Uh, already he's doing a masters in trans history and politics, and he was familiar with the National Library systems. Um, he saw alliances. So we didn't see any issues there [00:14:30] with that, um, that classifying or that describing that was a very smooth process. And is it something of a new thing where you actually get the person depositing to actually write, say, the descriptions or the summaries, as opposed to, like a curator later on, absolutely generally speaking to date on the whole, curators have drafted the interpretive material and then checked it past the person. Uh, sometimes it's just been because we've [00:15:00] brought all the information together from different perspectives. It's not always about that one person's perspective. It's often a bigger story that the person's story fits into. So therefore we've drafted the interpretation and then checked it past them. But with will it is his story. The history story dominates, and we wanted to dominate because it actually still will speak to a bigger story itself. So we were very determined that his words would be the record for [00:15:30] these objects. So So just thinking about kind of the and classification are you actively going through and and tagging, uh, objects with kind of LGBTI tags? Yes. So what I've done just off my own batch with the history collection objects at Papa is I identified what objects were overtly associated with Rainbow history and LGBT Q I plus stories and makers. And I was actually able to [00:16:00] tag 730 individual object records that were very clearly about LGBT Q I plus experiences. And I thought that was really exciting because that actually indicates that there's probably many, many, many more objects that aren't so obviously identifiable but actually might be in that realm. And there's also, of course, all the other departments at Papa that might be able to tag their objects as well. So that's like art photography. Um [00:16:30] uh, Maori. The Pacific team are starting to take their objects, too, so it's quite exciting when you think about that. The power of tagging or taking is probably not quite weird, but the power of classifying in using those terms that people can find. So So how did you how did you initially come up with that list of of 700 plus items? I mean, how how did you know that? Well, I must say I knew a lot of them because I've collected a lot of the objects, and I know from the history of the last 25 years, um, where those objects are. [00:17:00] So I it it was quite clear to me how to bring those together and also talking to my curatorial colleagues as well. Sometimes I there's subjects and talking to our art curator. Some of the art curators have tagged their classified their objects as well. So you do need to keep talking to people. I call it socialising the idea amongst, um, curators. So you need to keep talking to colleagues and asking them, You know, what is in your collections that might have a rainbow story or rainbow influence and just [00:17:30] getting to to sort of really dig deep and think about it. So does that mean I could go on the te Papa Collections online website and enter that tag for, say, LGBTI? And it would bring up all those results? Well, you have to be quite precise. This is the problem with it. You have to enter LGBT because it's a northern Hemisphere acronym. Yes. So if you enter LGBT that will bring up those objects. What other objects have come [00:18:00] in? Well, I I'm very passionate about small, everyday objects, how people self identify in small ways that are manageable for them. So I particularly love things like posters and T shirts and badges. Uh, so I personally collected the some very, very tiny pronoun badges, which are made by, um, Rainbow Youth. I think they do wonderful work, and I thought this was a really cool way just to get that whole, Uh, it's [00:18:30] it's it's OK. And you should ask what people's pronoun pronouns are. And I thought, What can participate in that by collecting the material culture of pronoun? And I think that's it's sort of like a It's just a very small, tiny activism. I think that museums can engage in is collect the material that people are using to make the world a better place. Essentially, it's a little bit of human rights work, and I think even though badges are tiny, uh, takes courage to wear them. And, uh, these little pronoun badges, if you wear them, they start a dialogue [00:19:00] with people. People ask you, you know, what is your pronoun? Why do you need to why are you wearing your pronouns? And I think, uh, I think it's a really It's a really nice way to access those stories and those important changes in society. Can you just describe what the badges look like? Well, they're very plain, everything tiny. They're white with pink text on them. One says they slash them. One says she slash her, and one says he slash him. So these are just some of the pronouns [00:19:30] available. I mean, there are multiple pronouns out there, and it's, um it's expanding territory. And it's just really interesting that I think Papa, uh, tapa is a national museum needs to capture these little moments. Uh, that I call them Little Zeitgeist moments as society expands its thinking beyond the binary. So these badges, even though they're tiny, they are hugely significant. But they are tiny, but it's not [00:20:00] a tiny amount of work that goes into, like acquiring something like that. Can you tell me how much time it would take to, say, acquire these three badges? Absolutely. It takes a lot of time because we need to write a very well informed justification proposal to collect anything, and it needs to be well thought out and a reference to work. So I need to look at the literature and look at, uh, what's happening in history and place the badges in a wider context. And it needs to be very [00:20:30] well thought out. And they now need the support of my curatorial colleagues as well. And then, if everybody supports it, then I need my head of department to support it. If they support it, then, um then it goes to our senior collection development committee, and then they decide whether or not it should come to the national collection. So it's a very long process, but it begins with me seeing something that I think is nationally significant and then working it up and justifying it [00:21:00] for the national collection in front of me. You've got a document that you wrote in October 2018 called Rainbow Community Collections at te Papa. Tell me about that. So last year I felt very passionate that I wanted to document uh what we the work we do because I firmly believe we're papa is a human rights museum, and I really wanted to document what we do and what we aspire to do with our Rainbow community collections at Papa. So I wrote a document [00:21:30] which I shared with my team and and everybody is, you know, really excited. And it's it's been very useful. So it talks about the fact that we do collect and we do display objects and stories which reflect and materialise LGBT Q I plus life and experiences and histories and a we actually do do that work and our aims are always to represent the diversity and richness of our rainbow communities. And we want to bring hidden histories to light with people's permission. [00:22:00] We want to work with people and we want to. We want to collaborate with people with community advisors. We want Coco collect and co curate, and we often use the disability activist motto, which is nothing about us without us. So we always want to be fair and work with people and we want to be an advocate for rainbow communities as well. You know, we can engage in contemporary discussions on gender diversity and some of the issues facing Rainbow communities. You know, we can be a safe place for those conversations. We want to be relevant to people. [00:22:30] So we sort of what, what we've been observing over the last few years is this incredible sort of opening up and expanding of, um, rainbow life and experience and terminology, and, uh, and where we're going, where where are we going in the future? We want to be part of all that. So this is sort of why I wanted to write a document about where we've been and where we're going and what we hope for. One of those, um, discussion points in your document is under the title discussions [00:23:00] to be held. What are the discussions that you wanted to hold? Well, we wanted to talk about how we name and frame our collections. Uh, so the acronyms we use, the classification systems we use, and we've talked quite a bit about that, uh, talking about how do we want to, um, use our indigenous terms and our Pacific gender terms? Uh, like, for example. And we wanted to, uh, really sort of work across to [00:23:30] papa. We wanted to work with our like, even our HR team. You know, uh, is to Papa, you know, Are we fit for purpose when it comes to our rainbow communities and how we collect and how we interact? Oh, And also we wanted to look at our public programmes. You know, our exhibitions often we privilege, uh, sort of overt stories that people might expect to see. Like, for example, flamboyant stories like can, uh, homosexual law reform, you know, moments [00:24:00] of great conflict and anxiety and change. So we've we've we've been thinking about How do we actually just tell everyday stories? You know, we don't It doesn't always have to be these big, loud moments or moments of anxiety and conflict. We could tell just everyday stories through a rainbow lens. So we've been trying to challenge ourselves in that way. And I guess for, um, objects That may not be, um, kind of outwardly rainbow. [00:24:30] But I mean, everyone is full of a whole range of different intersectionality. And so, um, I guess how you say that somebody is from the Rainbow Communities when in fact, the exhibition might not be about the Rainbow Communities. It's a really good point. It's what story do you privilege and because, uh, papa tends to have a very less is more approach on the exhibition floor because we really want people to have a good experience. So we don't want to overwhelm them with, [00:25:00] um, too many stories. Sometimes you do privilege, certain aspects of an object in the person's story, and you might not reference their rainbow story at all or their experience at all. And other times you will. So it's a very careful curatorial, um, decision making process where we all work together collaboratively with our, um, audience and Insight team about how do you get the right stories across and be really fair to the maker or fear to the objects [00:25:30] stories? And it is tricky. It is tricky. What are some of the other objects that have come in? So we are constantly looking, uh, to fill gaps in the past record. And, uh, we've had some lovely opportunities to collect objects around the homosexual law reform campaign in 1985 and 1986 and again, Gareth, you've helped us with that too. You you've got your eye out there, and sometimes people need a little bit of support and encouragement to offer things to Papa. They don't think that they they're all post [00:26:00] or or all placard which have find a place here. But it does find a place. We're very keen because we had very small holdings around the homosexual law reform campaign. Uh, for example, we collected this wonderful, uh, placard by Hugh Young, which says, I signed 27 times. It's very obscure, but it's it's history, and its moment is incredibly significant because it was made by hug supporters during, um, some of the worst moments of the campaign. For example, when the antireformers, led by [00:26:30] MP Norm Jones, um, collected this huge petition against, um, reforming the law and presented to Parliament on the steps of Parliament. But many of the boxes were half empty or multiple signatures from the same people or false signatures. And so Hugh Young, who was part of the heterosexuals unafraid of gays movement. He and his friends painted these placards and has said, I signed 27 times and they held it up as the petition was being presented on [00:27:00] the steps of Parliament. So it's very ironic. It's very subtle. You have to know the context, so we very carefully have, um, interpreted it so that people understand what the object means. But Hugh himself, I think, was a bit worried that it was subtle and that maybe nobody would want it, but he had carefully looked after it all these years, and I think it's just marvellous that he was that he felt safe enough to actually give it to the National Museum, where it's found a place of honour. And what what are some of the other, uh, items [00:27:30] that have come in over the last couple of years? How we've been able to collect more, uh, wonderful posters, particularly New Zealand AIDS Foundation, safer sex posters and anti discrimination posters about Taku peoples? And they've been very powerful. So from sort of the nine, well, actually going back to about the eighties now we've We're starting to get reasonable, safer sex campaign posters, and we've come up to recent times up up to about two years ago. We've got posters from those campaigns, and it's just to show [00:28:00] the changing concerns around HIV and AIDS and how those concerns are, uh, disseminated in city streets. What sort of community groups are being targeted? Sometimes the posters are very targeted. Sometimes they're quite wide in their reach. But we just want to try and track those changes and imagery and messaging over the last generation. Uh, we're also keeping our eye on fashion. So we've recently collected Jimmy Dee's wonderful [00:28:30] gender bender collection recently where he's looking at how, uh, gender informs clothing and he's deconstructed it. Uh, we also collected Linda Lapo work. She's a designer, and we collected some really amazing set pieces from her work, and we've also collected just just looking for collecting around our gaps. So we collected a few posters in a badge from Lagos, the Lesbian and Gay Archives of New Zealand. They had some spare copies [00:29:00] of really important posters looking at pride and devotion in the nineties and a really fantastic early badge from the late 19 seventies, which says, We are everywhere, which is wonderful Pink Triangle badge. So we're also on the lookout for those really important symbols in rainbow history, like the Rainbow and the Pink Triangle, Um, and looking to fill some of those important gaps around our social history. Well, well, Speaking of social history, I was really impressed to see that during this year's Pride [00:29:30] Festival, um, te papa was doing, uh, a 101 event, uh, around um, LGBTI Rainbow Communities. And I just wonder if you could maybe talk about that, but also some of the other kind of access and publication opportunities that have happened, uh, with regard to these these collections over the last couple of years. Yes, we've had some wonderful access opportunities over the last couple of years, and I'm very proud of them because with the wider team at Papa, we've been [00:30:00] able to actually provide access in quite different ways from the wonderful friends event Pride 101, which was held this year where we had some really exciting speakers and a really great appreciative audience. And that was a wonderful thing to see the friends doing. And then we were able to very quickly publish one of the speeches by Drew Hedwin, who is one of the co directors of Pride this year, and we managed to provide our blogging platform to their work, and that was a wonderful [00:30:30] moment. Um, and we we offered two lots of tours at our different, uh, locations up to street here at where we got out our fashion collection, our Rainbow fashion collections, our homosexual law reform objects, the New Zealand AIDS Memorial Quilt. We really were able to celebrate the diversity of our collections on different physical locations. That's very exciting. To be able to do that. It takes a lot of work, but people really appreciate it, and it's really meaningful [00:31:00] for us. The staff as well. We get a lot out of it. Sometimes you can call that a knowledge exchange sort of situation. That's why I love the events, because people bring so much to the events and tell us amazing things. And we end up having quite a an emotional as well as an intellectual exchange. And I love that about access events. So we've been able to get the New Zealand AIDS Memorial Quilt out, probably about twice a year for various events and, uh, from young people. We've had secondary school school [00:31:30] students view it right through to your walking tour right through to pride events, um, through to artist events. So it's actually had some really interesting interactions, and it's kept that quilt alive. You know, it's it's a community. Um, it has very, uh, important national and international stories embedded in it. It's not just, um, of interest to the Rainbow Communities. It's of interest to everybody, and it's been a real thrill to share it widely, and it's beautifully online, too. Of [00:32:00] course, I've got to say that seeing something online and then seeing it in the physical space, um, are quite different. Uh, quite different feelings, aren't they? Absolutely, uh, researchers often come to us and say, I want to see this, and I wanna see this and I want to see this, so I start them. I start by sending them the collections online links they like, you know, zoom in. You'll see all the detail on this photo and then let me know if you want to see it in the flesh, and people invariably do come back and say, Yes, I do want to see it in the flesh, And it's very important that people [00:32:30] actually do if they can see it, because there's something about the material presence of an object and it will move you in unexpected ways, and you can never always know what those ways will be. And you can intellectualise all you like about objects. But when you're in the presence of an object, it can actually be quite a different thing, and it can make you think new thoughts and make new connections and it can be very inspiring. So So one of the things that struck me over the last couple of years, [00:33:00] uh, at te papa is, uh, Papa has been involved in Pink Shirt Day, which was originally about, um, homophobic bullying, but has kind of, um, broadened out into, um, being, um, an anti-bullying day. Um, internationally, Um, can you tell me about the papa's involvement in that? So te Papa has observed Pink Shirt Day now for the last two years since 2018 and lots of staff have engaged with it and it's been really successful, and it seems to me it's a kind of interesting [00:33:30] times that we live in, and I think it's it's probably been inflicted to by the me too movement and times up movements. So it's become much broader than its original. I think that's a good thing. Looking to the future. What do you think the Papas collection policies will be around Rainbow LGBTI going forward? Well, we will always have an inclusive collection strategy. We will always try and represent all New Zealanders, [00:34:00] no matter where they've come from or what their orientation is or what their identity is that's always going to be the aim, and it's it links right back to our act of Parliament. But it depends on the, uh, the the take. We, uh, decide on each year how we going to actually manifest that each year and our actual actual collecting. So this year we're focused on trans experiences, and as we go forward, I we will [00:34:30] broaden that out. And we will look at intersex experiences and other experiences because it's really important that we diversify the collections as much as possible. So it's just gently finding our way forward. But there is There is complete commitment in my team, and I guess the more that you collect, the more that other people will be saying, Well, why aren't you collecting me? So are you open for people to be coming to you and saying, Well, you should be collecting this experience? Absolutely. [00:35:00] Because we we're only a very small demographic here behind the scenes, so we actually need people's advice and guidance and suggestions. It's it's just critical that we work with New Zealanders on deciding what to collect. And even though I say that I at the end of the day we we can only collect a fragment, just fragments of experience. But we want to hear what people think those fragments should be, because it's very important that the National Museum represents as much [00:35:30] of New Zealand as possible.

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AI Text:September 2023
URL:https://www.pridenz.com/ait_rainbow_taonga_at_te_papa_2019.html