Period 7

PERIOD WHO?

Period7 is not a collective or a cool kids club but a community created to connect young local creatives across Aotearoa through the participation in the creative arts. We provide opportunities for young people to engage in things they wouldn’t normally have the access or means to.

THE KAUPAPA

Our main goals since the creation of Period7 have been to;

1. Increase youth participation in the arts 
2. Create an organic network to showcase what the creative pipeline looks like from high school > tertiary education > working across different ways by connecting youth with those who are proactively pursuing a creative pathway.
3. Provide opportunities for young artists to share and show their work 

OUR STORY

Starting out as an idea to try and connect and support our young creatives in high school through the lockdown period at the start of 2021 we utilised Discord as our means to start building the foundations of what we have now. We engaged those who joined us by creating lockdown briefs as well as hosting live tutorials covering different things (adobe software, editing etc.)

As the lockdowns lifted we saw an opportunity to trial a lot of things, and so for the past year we have been mobilising to ensure our 3 main goals are met, totally self-funded. The past year we have been able to host multiple workshops led by young local artists (photography, screen printing, collage making etc.) making sure that the spaces we occupy are accessible to those in our community as well as commissioning local artists to create art for those workshops as well as facilitate them. At the start of this year we had the opportunity for some of those a part of the Period7 community to showcase their work in a gallery space as part of the Raroboys & Friends Show at Māngere Arts Centre. This show highlighted the network, reach and impact that being part of a community can have by Seeing work from high school students, tertiary students and more established artists all in the same space, is what we need more of. Networking across rather than up.

WHAT NEXT?

We’re looking to host a holiday programme/intensive. A culmination of the work we have done so far but condensed within a shorter time frame. This holiday programme will be launched in early 2023 with an open registration for those 16-21 and will run across multiple days. The goal for this programme is to learn new skills, build on already learnt skills and to broaden their perspective of what creativity looks like in different forms as well as introduce them to local creators outside of their immediate networks. Over the course of the programme, everyone will be working towards a shared brief which they will be able to journey alongside together with the help of local artists in a mentorship role.

Being realistic on what we can deliver, we see this programme running at a smaller scale accommodating up to 20-30 participants. This will give us the opportunity to create a more impactful and meaningful experience. The current run-sheet for a day looks at the programme running from 10am — 3pm with allocated times for lunch which will be provided.

This funding will be allocated to cover costs that include;

• Space hire
• Koha for mentors/speakers
• Food to cover 5 days 
• Equipment/gear hire
• Resources

Our measure of success is seeing connections being created in this space that carry on outside of it. From sharing each other's work, showing up to support one another and taking skills they’ve learned then applying them to their own work. Knowing that we have the means (funded or not) now to be able to create the things that we wished we had growing up, Period7 will continue to operate regardless of the outcome of this campaign but we’ve shown you what we can do with no funding, imagine what we can do with your help. 

Faafetai Tele Lava,
Geoffery Matautia & Bryson Naik