Every country has is pool of brilliance, but I wonder if the proportion becomes higher in the smaller nations.
Here in the land of the Kiwi we don’t often celebrate our past, perhaps because we’re still so young as nations go.
We have one fifteenth the population of the UK and a similar landmass.
We’re still outgrowing our roots as pioneers and still have more than our share of that vestigial need to go where no man (or woman, or bird filling the niche of a forest mammal) has gone before.
Becoming aware of our history and how we’ve enriched the world is HUGE to our nation’s self esteem, which, face it, is still in deficit (even if that DOES make us nicer people)
Before I get around to telling you WHY this subject is on my mind today, let me point you to two amazing resources I recommend to Kiwi’s and the World alike, NZ’s a real jewel, as you’ll discover…
First take a peek at nzedge.com, Brian Sweeny’s encyclopedia of NZ’s humble world changers. It’s more than eye opening!
The second place you’ve gotta see is no8rewired.kiwi/nz-inventions/ I used this site so much in the project I’m about to mention, that I had to buy the book. Sumptuous, it is!
Ahem, anyhow, Prebbleton folk/country singer Chas Williams comissioned three animated music videos for his upcoming site. The brief was wide open, so apart from sounding drafty it also allowed for a bit of artistic silliness. Ya gotta love that! The song was an angle on the traditional “boy meets girl, girl is nasty to boy, boy realises he’s slightly daft” song. The first half, which I’ll detail in future posts was, as you’ll see, given even more of a twist on the traditional.
However the second half easily shifted sideways to say “Don’t stay quiet if you care for your country.” It was packed with kiwiana and examples of folks before us who stood up to change things.
For the following related posts I’m going to start with the scene of six objects (and one person) depicted in the image featured at the top of this post.
But that’s tomorrow’s task. If you can name the objects, the people related to them and the task they undertook, (before the next two posts in this series are up) I’ll paint your caricature for nix, and make it flattering to boot!
