Te Papa’s DIY campaign to stop the Wellington City Council cutting its sponsorship to one million dollars a year is now in full swing. So how’s it going?
As at the end of last week they had around 2000 Post-it notes on a board in the foyer and a handful of submissions in a Perspex box. The Post-it notes reflect the reality that Te Papa is child focussed. Around one third are by kids and most of the rest by people supporting Te Papa’s activities for kids.
Onto the social networks. Te Papa has 24 pics of the Post-its on their Flickr Stream (most sideways for some reason), their #saveourservices has one tweet which rather curiously reads, “You can’t eat money,” and don’t seem to be using Facebook.
Te Papa’s PR guy has put up three posts on the Te Papa blog with some support info. He makes the point that 30% of the WCC Te Papa sponsorship comes for ratepayers with the bulk coming from rated businesses. Plus apparently 60% of Wellington visitors visit five or more times a year and 36% twice. By our calculations this means around 177,090 individual Wellingtonians attend the museum annually.
Then there’ a general call for Wellington people to make a submission to the WCC coupled with the threat of charges to use Discovery Centres, increases in charges for StoryPlace, fewer free exhibitions and fewer new exhibitions. That should work.
Image: Post-it note power at Te Papa
