Promoting Otago, 1980s-style

Tags

1980s, film, flatting, promotion

A screenshot from the film ‘Learning is a way of life,’ courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Higher Education Development Centre films, MS-4104/003. Copyright University of Otago.

In 1981, following 25 years of a growing or, at worst, stable roll, the University of Otago faced a decline in student enrolments. As the northern universities continued to grow, Otago dropped from 7004 students in 1980 to 6825 in 1981, and would drop again to 6739 in 1982. At a time when travel and accommodation costs were rising rapidly, Otago, which drew the majority of its students from out of town, was at a disadvantage. Adding to its woes was the government’s new Tertiary Assistance Grants Scheme, introduced in 1980 to replace the old student bursary system. The new scheme was less generous, and students did not discover whether or not they had been approved for the “hardship” addition to the basic grant until well into the year; many were turned down. Some potential students were not willing to risk penury and Otago’s enrolments suffered.

The university was not about to take this lying down. Attempts to persuade government to amend its student funding policies proved unsuccessful, meaning the university’s promotional activities became critically important. To attract future students, it produced “attractive colour brochures” about its various degree courses and its residential colleges. It also broadened its promotional efforts with an exciting new venture, the film Learning is a way of life: an introduction to student life at Otago University. The Hocken has recently digitised the 16mm films in its collections, and I’m delighted to be able to share some excerpts on this blog (the film remains copyright to the University of Otago).

Learning is a way of life was produced in-house by the Higher Education Development Centre’s AV production centre, with a budget of $11,700 (including distribution costs). Planning began early in 1981, with a committee of four: HEDC director David Teather, Robert van der Vyver (the film’s producer), English professor Colin Gibson (who wrote the script), and university liaison officer Ian Page. Music professor John Drummond composed the bouncy soundtrack, performed by members of the music department. The budget included two hours of helicopter hire for the opening aerial shots.

Though scripted, the film was based on the experiences of five real students: Peter Griffiths (a med student), Amanda Ellis (arts), Diana Carson (commerce), Graham Mandeno (science) and Joan Parker (education). They were clearly selected to represent a wide range of students. While Ellis was a fresher learning her way around campus, Griffiths was in his third year and a sub-warden at Unicol. Parker (who doesn’t appear in these excerpts) was a mature student with children at school.

Titles and opening scenes:

Orientation:

The “terrific” new clubs and socs building:

The joys of flatting:

Around the University Union:

 

I’ve selected some general scenes of student life to show here, but the 33-minute film also featured lectures, tutorials, field work, music and drama productions, along with a few scenes of the Dunedin shops and entertainment venues. It closed with scenes from graduation.

The film screened on nationwide television in June and September 1982, and there was also a showing at the Dunedin Public Library. By November more than 30 copies had been sold or loaned to schools or individuals. But how successful was the university’s first major promotional effort? Enrolments jumped by 350 in 1983 and by just over 200 more in 1984; by the end of the 1980s growth had accelerated and Otago had over 10,000 students. As the 1985 university newsletter commented, Otago was back to the familiar problem of “a rising roll and a limited budget.” It is difficult to measure what influence the film may have had on enrolments. I’m not convinced that the scenes of Amanda’s hostel room would have drawn anybody here! If you saw this film and it helped sway your decision to come to Otago, I’d love to hear from you.

Otago’s promotional efforts of the early 1980s started something. Competition between tertiary providers was heating up as free market economics gained influence. “This is a competitive world and Otago’s promotional efforts triggered off activity in some of the other universities,” noted the staff newsletter in 1985. Media and communications accelerated in importance and various campaigns have since sought to grow Otago’s “place in the world,” as one slogan put it.

Learning is a way of life was, in the 1980s, an innovative and sophisticated way to market the University of Otago in response to a crisis in enrolments. Though it cannot have been the intention of its creators, it is now a wonderful historical snapshot of life at Otago at that time. I hope it brings back happy memories for some viewers!

Update – 13 October 2014

For those who would like to see the entire half-hour film, I’m very happy to say it is now available on the Hocken Collections YouTube channel (in 3 separate parts) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChzpcDq9VcuDLMXaoJHklBQ

 

 

 

Student life in 1934

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1930s, books, clothing, film, food, home science, music, recreation, sports, Studholme

Margaret Foster-Barham on the 1926 Triumph 500cc motorbike she rode from Nelson to Otago. Image courtesy of Judy Hogg.

“At present I am full of ‘pep’ with lots of good resolutions for work, health, exercise, thoughts & deeds.” So begins the 1934 diary of Margaret Foster-Barham as she commenced her final year of study for the three-year Diploma in Home Science at Otago. Margaret lived at Lower Studholme, the original Studholme building (where Unicol is today). As a senior resident she now had the luxury of a room to herself, though she had mixed feelings about that. “It’s rather a pity all the old wives are so far away. However perhaps it will be better not to see too much of them. Their talk upon dress & men becomes a little irksome.”

The freshers’ welcome, held at Upper Studholme, was an enjoyable event. Margaret was impressed with the supper and recorded the menu “as it might be a suggestion for some other time.” The students indulged in oyster and salmon patties with green peas, Parker House rolls, sandwiches, peach ice cream, coffee, salted almonds and other nuts. The Dean of Home Science, the impressive American Ann Strong, then gave a talk about her recent trip, showing “photos on a moving camera.” Strong had also brought back from her trip “a fascinating new gong” for Studholme, “on which different calls can be played.” Margaret found the Dean “most inspiring”, as she “expresses ideals in just the manner I would put things if I could.”

Margaret found her workload pretty heavy at times. As part of the practical element of her home science course she took her turn, paired with another student, at housekeeping at Studholme, which included a stint of cooking dinner over Easter. Later in the year she “nearly bust with pride” when she got 80% in nutrition. Then there was dressmaking. The students all made a “body,” a basic pattern to fit their own measurements, to be used as a basis for other patterns. Margaret’s diary reveals that body image is not a new problem. “I have been working at the old body,” she wrote in March. “She is looking quite nice, though is alarmingly big. It’s rather a good thing we can’t see ourselves as others see us!!” Her sewing projects included a green woollen dress and a peach velvet dress. A green silk dress was “not too successful. Brassiere kept slipping & also straps. Very maternal effect!”

But Margaret’s life was not all work; she socialised regularly with friends, both male and female. She particularly enjoyed the “pictures”, which she attended frequently. Favourites she saw in 1934 included Bitter Sweet, starring Anna Neagle, and The Song of Songs, which Margaret found “very beautiful … in excellent taste.” It starred Marlene Dietrich: “I love her voice & figure.” Wednesday nights at the musical society were another regular highlight: “It is great fun. We are doing a very jolly ballad of Gustav Holst, called King Estmere.” There was also time for a little light reading. One favourite was “a jolly little book”: The Small Dark Man by Irish writer Maurice Walsh. It was “light & well written” and Margaret noted it would  be “rather a nice book to give for a present.”

Margaret Foster-Barham. Photograph courtesy of Judy Hogg.

Margaret also enjoyed more energetic pursuits, such as tennis, though she noted that her “tennis needs much improvement.” An outing with her friend Tony to watch motorbike racing was “exciting in patches but for the most part boring & cold.” Motorbikes were, however, an important influence in Margaret’s life. She rode her Triumph from her family home in Nelson to university, and later to her teaching job at a Canterbury school. On one occasion she fell off in the gravel at Oaro just south of Kaikoura. Local farmer Owen Stanford rescued her from the ditch and, as daughter Judy explains, Margaret showed her gratitude by marrying him!

In 1934 there were only 1237 students at the University of Otago, including 79 studying home science. Just 319 – a quarter – of Otago students were women. The campus was clearly a very different place from today, but some things don’t change. Students still struggle to balance work and play, celebrate when they get good marks, enjoy socialising and movies and music, have adventures getting from A to B, and analyse the quality of residential college food. My heartfelt thanks to Judy Hogg for sharing her mother’s charming diary and allowing us a peek into one woman’s experience of life at Otago eighty years ago!

 

When Hollywood came to campus

Tags

1990s, 2000s, film, science communication

Did you know that Cheryl West and James Bond once had a conversation in Marama Hall? That’s stretching it a bit … but English actor Daniel Craig, who later became James Bond, and New Zealand actress Robyn Malcolm, who later starred as Cheryl in Outrageous Fortune, did actually feature in a scene together in Sylvia, partly filmed at Otago in January 2003. At the time, most of the local attention centred on the presence of one of the best-known celebrities of that time (and this), Academy Award-winning American actress Gwyneth Paltrow. She made the front page of the ODT two days in a row. There was additional excitement for celebrity spotters as Paltrow’s boyfriend, rock star Chris Martin of Coldplay, joined her in Dunedin.

Gwyneth teaching at Otago

Sylvia is a biopic starring Paltrow as poet Sylvia Plath and Craig as her husband, poet Ted Hughes.  The filmmakers – who included director Christine Jeffs, a New Zealander – chose some of the University of Otago’s beautiful stone buildings to stand in for the Massachusetts universities where Plath and Hughes taught in the 1950s. There are scenes of students wandering through the grounds around the Geology and Archway Buildings, Plath conducting a class in an old lecture theatre, and Hughes giving a public talk and attending a reception in Marama Hall. Further scenes were shot in Karitane, which became Cape Cod for the occasion.

Daniel & Gwyneth at Karitane

This was not the first time that Otago stood in for an American university in an international film. 2002 Bollywood production Om Jai Jagadish also filmed on campus. About 35 Otago students got some out of the ordinary holiday work playing extras in scenes shot at Knox College. Have you seen this movie? I haven’t been able to track down a copy, so I would be intrigued to learn if filming took place elsewhere around the university as well.

The best-known film actually about the University of Otago is undoubtedly the comedy/thriller Scarfies (1999). The film is set principally in a student ‘squat’ (a creepy old house in Brown Street), but there are some brief scenes filmed on campus. These include the market day stalls where the scarfies spend some of their ill-gotten gains, and a law lecture (featuring a cameo appearance by Mark Henaghan, now Dean of the Law Faculty).

Though the University of Otago provided a setting for these movies, its own filmmaking is firmly focused on science documentaries. In 2001 the university began a collaboration with NHNZ (formerly the natural history unit of TVNZ), a hugely successful Dunedin documentary business, to teach natural history filmmaking. The programme then evolved into the Centre for Science Communication, which awards masters’ degrees with specialities in filmmaking, writing, and popularizing science.

A less serious kind of filmmaking began at Otago in 1990, when student activities manager Stephen Hall-Jones created the Mothra video competition, complete with ‘Fred’ awards for the best 15-minute student-made ‘bad’ movies. The competition survived until 2011, but then became a casualty of the cost-cutting required once students’ association membership was voluntary. Mothra had a purely recreational focus, but did spark an interest in some students who went on to make careers in film and television. Nowadays recreational filmmakers can enter the 48 hours filmmaking competition, a nationwide event not restricted to students.

Have you ever made a film at the University of Otago? Do you know of any other feature films with scenes shot on campus?

Otago in fiction

Tags

1910s, 1930s, books, campus fiction, classics, drama, film, Rhodes scholars, writers

Many talented creative writers have graced the university with their presence. Acclaimed fiction writers who studied at Otago have published in a wide variety of genres: crime novelist Vanda Symon, popular fantasy writer Juliet Marillier, master of the short story A.P. Gaskell, literary novelist Fiona Farrell, and of course the incomparable Janet Frame. Many of New Zealand’s greatest writers have also spent time at Otago, not as students, but as holders of the Burns Fellowship (a few, like Farrell and Frame, have done both). And let’s not forget the staff: did you know that the talented Liam McIlvanney, Professor of Scottish Studies, moonlights as a crime writer, or that Rogelio Guedea, senior lecturer in the Spanish programme, is a best-selling novelist in Mexico?

Despite all this creative power, the university has seldom featured as a setting for fiction; ‘campus fiction’ has not, it seems, been a popular genre in this country. That makes the 1970 novel of Dan Davin, Not here, not now, all the more interesting. The book is closely based on the experiences of Davin and his wife Winnie Gonley as Otago students of the 1930s. It centres on Martin Cody, a brilliant young working class Catholic boy from Southland. Cody is an arts student who drinks, dances, plays rugby, falls in love (more than once), writes, questions his religion, and eventually wins a Rhodes Scholarship (after failing to make it in his first attempt thanks to a rumour which, if true, would reflect badly on his moral character). Many other still familiar institutions of Otago student life are vividly portrayed in the novel: disputes within the students’ association, controversies over what should appear in Critic, slaving late at night over books, and finding kindred spirits at a religious group (the Catholic Students’ Club – now CathSoc). Of course some commonplace aspects of 1930s life have long gone, including the once ubiquitous figure of the landlady, who featured large in the lives of the many students living in private board.

University of Otago Latin picnic at Whare Flat, 1932. Dan Davin is on the far right, with Angus Ross in front of him and Christopher Johnson to Davin’s right. Other students include Frank Hall (back left), Winnie McQuilkan (centre front) and Ida Lawson (in dark jacket behind her). The Classics staff, Prof Thomas Dagger Adams and Isabel Turnbull, are at front left.
Image courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library, Ref: 1/2-166716-F. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/22884184

I recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of student life; as reviewer Michael Beveridge commented in Landfall, “as a novelist Davin has been a first-rate historian”. Davin is probably best known for his novels and short stories about the Southland Irish Catholic community and for his war history and novels, but Not here, not now is also well worth a read. An earlier Davin novel, Cliffs of fall, is also partly set at the University of Otago (and is still on my growing ‘waiting to be read’ list). Davin himself studied classics at Otago, went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, served with distinction in World War II, and had a long career in publishing with Oxford University Press.

A poor scholar by C.R. Allen, published in 1936, is another novel about a working class boy who gains a Rhodes Scholarship. It charts the progress of the hero, Ponto, from his kindergarten days to Oxford, with a couple of brief chapters devoted to his time at the University of Otago: lectures, football, capping and dances all feature. The novel is set in the 1900s and 1910s, and brilliantly evokes the streets and landscapes of north Dunedin prior to World War I. Though Allen had been blind since the 1910s, he knew this environment well: he lived with his family at Arana – later to become a university residential college – and studied for the Anglican priesthood at Selwyn College. Unsurprisingly, All Saints Church also looms large in the book.

Another intriguing 1930s novel is The wind and the rain, by Otago medical graduate Merton Hodge. This was adapted by Hodge from his hit play of the same name, which had an impressive three-year run on the London stage. Film versions came out in 1938 and 1959, the latter starring Alan Bates. It is a story of a group of medical students sharing lodgings and, though the setting is Edinburgh, Hodge’s colourful characters were, according to a 1930s newspaper, “moulded on personalities he met while at Otago University, one of them being a well-known doctor at present practising in the South.” If you know who that might be, I’d love to hear from you!

Can you identify any more of the students in the photograph? Do you know of any other novels with University of Otago settings which I can add to my reading pile? If so, please get in touch. Then there are the poems and films …. I’ll save those for future posts!