Where We Come From: The Writer’s Journey CHCH

Where We Come From: The Writers' Journey - Christchurch

Fifty years. One city. Stories you won't hear anywhere else.

Screenwriting in Aotearoa has been through more upheaval than most industries twice its size, and Christchurch has lived every chapter of it. On 21 May, the New Zealand Writers Guild marks its 50th anniversary with a live panel that brings that history home.

Writers from and connected to Ōtautahi unpack five decades of political, technological, and cultural change, from public broadcasting's golden era to the realities of writing for a global content market from a city that has had to reinvent itself more than once.

This is the conversation that doesn't happen on a Wellington stage or in an Auckland back office. It happens here.

Who gets to tell our stories. How the industry shapes what we make. What Christchurch's screen culture has contributed — and what it still has to say.

Tickets are deliberately affordable because this conversation should be accessible.

‍

‍Join us in Christchurch!

Thursday 21 May, 7–9pm

Kōawa Studios, University of Canterbury

Panellists:

• James Croot
• Gillian Ashurst
• Peter Rowley
• Andrew Gunn

Moderated by:

Alice Shearman, Executive Director, NZWG

Part of the NZWG 50th Anniversary programme — a year-long celebration of the writers behind Aotearoa’s screen stories.

Because no screen story begins without a writer. And no industry survives without understanding where it has come from.