Wellington Trip to Massey University School of Design

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By Danny Adams

On Wednesday the 5th of August, Mr Jones took 5 students, Billy Elwood, Roy Feng, Danny Adams, Will Duffy and Jack Colbourne up to Wellington along with Tania McDonald (Danny’s Mum) and Rachel Duffy (Will’s Mum) for a visit to Massey University. 

Last year, Danny, Billy, Will and Jack received automatic entry into the Bachelor of Design course after an interview with Astrid Visser, the Design Kaihapai at the school of Design, so a visit was in order for them to see where they wanted to study. 

At 6:30am we boarded the plane and took off, landing in Wellington with surprisingly little turbulence at around 8:30 am. From the airport, we got into taxis and drove to Massey University, outside the old Museum entrance to meet Gwyn Jones, Mr Jones’ son. Gwyn is an old boy of the college and is in his final year at Massey studying Industrial design. He was kind enough to take us around the campus and give us some inside knowledge into the area and courses. 

The first building we visited was the Industrial Design Center which held some amazing equipment. We visited the Fab Lab where we met a lecturer who told us about the workshop and what students did there using different materials. Next, we visited the tech room of Massey, where another lecturer took us through all the different areas: there was a resin and chemical room; an anti-sawdust room; a digital fabrication and laser cutting room; and a general workshop area. 

Gwyn then took us to the other side of the campus where we looked at the photography department. Yet another kind lecturer showed us around this area showing us the dark rooms, printers, the camera library and computer labs. After leaving there we were on our way to the visual communication design (VCD) area when we met Astrid Visser (head of admissions) who took us to a quiet spot to plan our courses. 

We then went to the fashion design department held inside the old museum where we viewed what goes on inside. At about 11 am our tour with Gwyn at the university had come to an end but our day was not over. 

We met up with Sam Clulee, another old boy, who showed us around the two halls of accommodation, Kāinga Rua or KR and The Cube; they are both 5-10 minute walks from the CBD and the Campus. 

From there we walked all the way to the end of town in school shoes where we found that the cable cars were temporarily out of order so we jumped into a taxi and went to the top to look over Wellington and its surrounds ourselves. We walked down through the botanical gardens and arrived outside the parliament building. 

We were then given two hours to roam Wellington and meet back outside Te Papa where we spent an hour investigating the museum. 

From there we got back into some taxis and arrived at the airport around 4:15 pm. After 25,000 steps in school shoes, we were all feeling pretty tired as we waited in the airport till our plane departed at 6 pm. As we landed back into Dunedin, around 7:30 we finished the day with a sigh of relief, more confidence in our choices, some painful feet and a good night's sleep.