Writing Workshop with Cassandra Barnett

28 September. Free entry.

APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN for our One-Day Writing Workshop with Cassandra Barnett.

Saturday 28 September, 11am - 3pm
Pūtaringamotu, Ōtautahi

Deadline for applications: Friday 13 September
Successful applicants notified by Tuesday 17 September

*********

The Physics Room and Blue Oyster are calling for applications to join a one-day writing workshop with Cassandra Barnett between Pūtaringamotu (Riccarton Bush) and The Physics Room on Saturday, 28 September 2024. Pūtaringamotu, is a unique, remnant stand of ancient podocarp forest in the middle of Ōtautahi city, and we will be walking there from The Physics Room in the morning, and returning to the gallery in the afternoon. Cassandra will focus on finding ways to write imaginatively, speculatively and widely about this specific locale, while reflecting upon our differing relations to place.

Kaupapa:
Earlier in 2024, Blue Oyster and The Physics Room hosted the Te Kiekie writing workshop at Woolshed Creek Hut. Te Kiekie Writing Workshop held the aim of clearly situating ourselves where we write: as manuhiri, tangata whenua, tauiwi and allies with a common agenda to work/write in resistance to colonising frameworks. Cassandra Barnett will be returning to Te Waipounamu to lead a one day workshop in the spirit of these principles. Participants will consider ways to write imaginatively, speculatively and widely about this place.

The workshop will be facilitated by Cassandra Barnett and the walk between The Physics Room and Pūtaringamotu will provide a structure for the workshop. On returning from Pūtaringamotu, participants will reflect on the current exhibition at The Physics Room, Etanah Lalau-Talapa’s Off the mark(ings). We will provide refreshments and kai during the workshop for all participants. The distance will be around 7km in total on mostly flat, paved surfaces. 

Please register your interest for one of 12 places in the workshop. Unfortunately, we cannot contribute towards flights and accommodation for those out of town.

How to apply:
Send through your name and a brief bio (approx. 50 words) about yourself and your writing experience, or why this workshop interests you, to physicsroom@physicsroom.org.nz AND director@blueoyster.org.nz by end of day Friday 13 September. If you have any dietary requirements or accessibility needs, please also make note of these so we can support your participation in the workshop.

*********

Cassandra Barnett (Raukawa ki Te Kaokaoroa-o-Pātetere, Ngāti Huri, Pākehā) is a writer, artist, māmā and educator. She writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry about indigenous and diasporic aesthetics, environmental personhood and other futures. Her poetry chapbook How | Hao, about forests and AI, was published in 2021. A second, in collaboration with Kelly Joseph, will be published in 2024. Ki Mua, Ki Muri, a co-edited book with Kura Te Waru Rewiri about Toioho ki Āpiti school of Māori visual art was published in 2023. Her poetry and short fiction are published in Tupuranga, Te Whē, Ora Nui, RNZ Reading Room, Turbine | Kapohau, Brief, Huia Short Stories, Landfall, Black Marks on the White Page (Penguin Random House, 2017) and others. Her essays can be found in Te Manu Huna a Tāne (Massey University Press, 2020), The Spinoff, The Pantograph Punch, ATE Journal of Contemporary Māori Art, Counterfutures, South as a State of Mind and many other art publications and catalogues.