First World War Centenary Projects
The History Group of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage is developing a series of projects to commemorate the centennial of the declaration of the First World War in 2014. At the moment we are working on two projects exploring the impact of the war on New Zealand society during and after the conflict.
New Zealand society c.1914-1939
Neill Atkinson is
developing a project that seeks to place the First World War and its
legacy in the wider context of early-20th-century New Zealand history.
Rather than focus on far-off battlefields and martial myths, it will
explore changing social patterns, popular culture and everyday life in
the quarter century from 1914 to 1939. Key themes will include the
impact and memorialisation of war, prohibition and sectarianism,
mobility, leisure and consumerism, suburban expansion, and the social
impact of technological innovations like radio, cinema, gramophone
records and cars.
After the War - oral history project
The History Group is currently recording interviews for an oral history project about growing up in New Zealand in the 1920s and 1930s. We are aware that there are no men or women who served in the First World War still alive in New Zealand and so this project aims to record, amongst other things, the effect of the war on life in this country in the two decades after it ended.
At the moment we are not intending to publish a book directly based on the interviews, but the material may be used in Neill Atkinson's New Zealand society 1914-1939 project and in website features on www.nzhistory.net.nz. The interviews will be archived at the Oral History Centre, Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. This project is being managed by Alison Parr, Senior Oral Historian at the Ministry.
Relief workers in a camp in the Akatarawa region near Wellington in 1932.
Image information:
Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand
Evening Post collection, G-84256-1/2