Follow the yellow shoes

Bright yellow shoes sit neatly at the entrance to Wellington’s St James Theatre, as if shed by a polite visitor. Inside, the trail of yellow shoes leads up the plush staircase to Trace Your Footsteps, an interactive project where people can recall and record their memories of the 14 international arts festivals held to date in the capital.

As the New Zealand Festival prepared to move into a new office space at the St James, it gave a team of young designers from Massey University 14 days, a tiny budget and an open brief to devise and construct a project that explored Festival memories. Trace Your Footsteps is the result.

The team from Open Lab, the design studio of Massey’s College of Creative Arts, created a souvenir booklet with memory-jogging pictures from all festivals, and an interactive system where people can record their personal festival memories online or on paper, and share them with others.

In effect, says Open Lab Director Anna Brown, “the students retraced the footsteps of other designers, artists and storytellers who worked on past festivals.”

New Zealand Festival Executive Director Sue Paterson says the organisation is “thrilled to be working with the talented young students at Massey’s Open Lab. The festival is a place where people experience extraordinary moments – both on and off stage. In those moments lasting memories are created. Even years later, some memories remain as vivid and as emotionally compelling as when they were formed. We welcome you to share your memories and add to the fabric of our festival history – in person or on our social media channels.”

This is not the first time the festival has collaborated with Massey design students. A Massey student Phil Tan was employed as design intern for last year’s festival through brand and communications agency The Church. This year, another student Kieran Stowers is design intern for the 2013 Wellington Jazz Festival, this time based at Open Lab.

Share your stories online at shareyourstory.co.nz or on paper at the interactive Story Wall on the 1st Floor of the St James, Courtenay Place, Wellington

See stories uploaded to Facebook at facebook.com/nzfestival

Follow progress on Twitter @nzfestival #festivalmemories

The exhibition runs until the afternoon of Monday February 4.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj21gdeoUcY