Going West in one place for all time

Hundreds of audio recordings, thousands of photographs and untold paper records of the Going West Writers Festival have been archived, documented and deposited with Auckland Libraries. Think of it as our own little thirtieth birthday present to Aotearoa.

Search the archive on Kura

30 years of the best conversations

The history of Going West is more than just a festival. From the outset it was a cultural moment. And practically every one of those moments – preserved as audio recordings over 30-odd years – are indexed and searchable on Kura, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections online catalogue. The photographs and paper documents are still undergoing processing and will be discoverable on Kura soon.

This is a valuable resource. If you were there at the time, you’ll recognise a convivial bunch of mates getting together for the best conversations anyone could imagine. If you’re a literary or cultural researcher, you’ll find a repository of ideas by our greatest storytellers and thinkers over three decades (and growing). If you’re a book lover, you won’t want to leave. One festival, thirty years: it’s all here.

Kura is the Auckland Libraries Heritage Collection catalogue. Its holdings are vast and well worth a look. It contains millions of non-bookish resources like photographs, maps, manuscripts, letters, diaries, business records, iwi records, oral histories and miles, miles more.

L-R David Steemson, Maurice Gee, Marilyn Duckworth, Maurice Shadbolt in the back of the Going West train, Glen Eden, 1997. Photo Gil Hanly / Going West / Auckland Libraries

How Kura works

Once you’re in Kura, search “Going West writers festival” and you’ll see a search result page showing a list of links to the unique listing page of every item in the collection. You can browse all these results, or narrow your search in two different ways: refine your search term, or define the type of material you’re after.
Simply by adding detail. Want to know about — say — Hone Tuwhare? Use “Hone Tuwhare” “Going West” (inverted commas help search engines to separate phrases).
Go to the “Collections” list on the left side of the search results page. This lets you select the type of thing you’re after based on its media form. Everything in the Going West collection is either a photograph, an audio record (aka “oral history”), or a paper record (aka “manuscript” or “ephemera”). We recommend deselecting all collections, then selecting “Photographs”, “Oral History” (for audio) and “Ephemera” or “Manuscripts” (for paper records).
In the Kura listing page for your selected item, use the dialogue box to send a request to Auckland Libraries. They will arrange to send you a non-downloadable listening link. For copyright reasons, this might have a time limit.
Partly. Photographs are attached to most of the audio recordings listed on Kura, so if an event was recorded, there are probably photographs of it, one of which will appear on the listing page for the audio recording of that event. Auckland Libraries is undertaking a long-term project to make more of the photographic collection viewable in Kura.
Nearly. Not everything was photographed, not everything was recorded, and some items (like some of the 20,000 photographs) are still being processed for uploading. If you think there’s an item which doesn’t appear in the Kura catalogue, use the dialogue box on the lower left of the collection page to send a message to Auckland Libraries.
In the “Collections” menu, select “Manuscripts” (for things like correspondences) and “Ephemera” (for things like programmes or flyers). You’ll need to view these at Waitākere Central Library in Henderson. On the Kura listing page for your selected item, use the dialogue box to send a request to Auckland Libraries.
Each item listing page has a dialogue box which allows you to send a message to Auckland Libraries. The page also has specific buttons to request use of an image or to download a file.
Nearly all the photographs in the collection have usage restrictions. You’ll need to make a separate application for each item. Click the shopping trolley icon, top right of the listing page, to make an image-use request.
Yes. If you see a misidentified person in a photograph, use the dialogue box in the item’s listing page to let an Auckland Libraries staff member know. They’ll verify your suggestion and update the item record accordingly.
More or less everything that ever happened at Going West — from the first event in 1996 with Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku to Sam Hunt to Tusiata Avia to Michael King to Marilyn Waring to Witi Ihimaera to The Topp Twins to Catherine Chidgey to any one of a hundred other writers from the last 30 years. Some events — like some of the poetry slams — were not recorded, but almost everything has been documented in some way.