What’s the Story? Information Session

Rotorua Museum cares for more than 55,000 objects and photographs. Some of these have fantastic stories behind them and some of them have no information whatsoever. A third group have scattered tempting nuggets of information which make the staff wonder “What’s the story?”. The staff selected some of these items and are inviting people to fill in the gaps by writing fictional short stories about the items.

Come down to Te Rūnanga Tea House (Government Gardens) for an information session to hear more on Sunday 4 August 2019 at 2pm. You will be able to see some of the specially selected items and get inspired to write your own story about them.

View a photo of the first ever electric kettle in Rotorua from 1910, and look through the contents of a writing case which includes a set of fleams (for blood-letting), along with various train, ship, theatre and racecourse tickets, pieces of gold and a notebook. What story can you conjure up about this strange selection of objects?

For those unable to make the information session, images and descriptions of the selected items will be listed on the museum website from 5 August.

Once you get inspired by these fascinating collection pieces you can write your creative story. It must be fiction with a maximum word count of 4,000.

The stories are to be emailed to Rotorua.museum@rotorualc.nz by 5pm on 1 September 2019.

Stories will be chosen by the Museum team and then shared online for others to read. Participants will be invited to a special evening (date to be confirmed) where the finalist read aloud their stories (if the writers wish to).

For further information contact Rotorua Museum, phone 07 350 1814 or email rotorua.museum@rotorualc.nz.