THURSDAY 3 November 2022
Could you please take five minutes to fill out a survey form which will show Manatū Taonga/Ministry for Culture and Heritage that Featherston Booktown has huge community support for the Featherston Booktown Karukatea Festivals and the work we are doing to encourage a love of reading, writing, storytelling and discussing ideas in our communities? We would SO appreciate your help in this!
Featherston Booktown has submitted a proposal to the Manatū Taonga Cultural Sector Regeneration Fund. As part of the evaluation process, Manatū Taonga is interested to hear from the people that are intended to benefit from each proposal (by 11:59 PM Saturday 13 November 2022).
This is what Featherston Booktown is proposing to do if we are successful in our funding application:
We are seeking funding so that Featherston Booktown’s programmes – in particular its popular annual Festival - can continue to thrive and innovate, thereby enriching and transforming communities across the Wairarapa, Wellington and Aotearoa through books, writing and storytelling. In particular, funding support will enable us to strengthen our existing engagement and partnership with mana whenua, principally through expanding the Pou Māori programme of events. We plan to grow community access and participation in our mahi by increasing our digital presence and channels, broadening, and deepening the Wairarapa-wide Young Readers in Schools programme, and developing an interactive app to capture local mana whenua stories as part of the planned Booklovers Bookshop tourist trail for the Wairarapa. We want to offer employment roles for four creative/cultural workers - and opportunities for five interns to develop skills for future cultural sector employment, while upskilling our 134-strong team of local volunteers. These additional resources will enable us to expand our already successful programmes to ensure that they are sustainable, resilient and relevant – and also equip us to host a successful International Organisation of Booktowns Global Conference in early 2024.
As someone who we think may benefit from our proposal, we would appreciate your feedback to help show support. Follow the link below (to surveymonkey.com) to read more about our proposal and complete a short survey.
You may also like to give feedback on some of the other proposals being considered. A full list of proposals is available on the Manatū Taonga website. If you need more information about the feedback process, you can read more on the Manatū Taonga website.
Many thanks for your support!
Mary Biggs
Manager Operations Featherston Booktown