Featherston Booktown Karukatea Festival
May 2020 Cancellation
It is with great disappointment that, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the latest guidelines from the New Zealand Government – and following extensive consideration by the Featherston Booktown Board of Trustees, Featherston Booktown has decided to cancel the 2020 Festival scheduled for 7-10 May 2020.
In making this decision, the Featherston Booktown Board are putting the health and safety of the Featherston community, writers, volunteers, audience members and other guests above all other considerations.
Featherston Booktown Operations Manager, Mary Biggs, says she is sad but grateful to the Board of Trustees for making this very hard decision.
“We want to keep our Featherston community, our writers and visitors safe and well. An enormous amount of work has been done to get to this point, so it’s disappointing that the Programme launch can’t go ahead on the 31st March and that we can’t celebrate the artefact of the book at our Festival in May.”
Featherston Booktown would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused – but hope that in making this call when we have, any inconvenience will be minimised.
The Featherston Booktown Board of Trustees is considering rescheduling the festival to later in the year – or holding it in another form - but this will depend on Government requirements regarding crowd sizes and events.
“We shall continue to monitor the situation and advise the public on our decisions about the Featherston Booktown Festival,” said Chair of the Featherston Booktown Board, Peter Biggs.
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Featherston Booktown Karukatea
Two cultures share our wonderful country – and region – and, at Featherston Booktown, we seek to recognise and bring that to life. After consulting Mana Whenua, we are proud to reveal the Te Reo expression of Featherston Booktown.
Karukatea means “the clear and observant eye” – with karu the word for “eye” and katea meaning “clarity”. The word takes in the narrative of our region (Wairarapa Moana being one eye of the fish and Wellington Harbour being the other eye of Māui’s fish). On a deeper level, the word also captures the concept of people seeking knowledge and clarity.
Our sincere thanks to Liz Mellish and Robin Potangaroa (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa) for their help and guidance through the process of finding an appropriate Te Reo expression of Featherston Booktown.