UCOL BLOG

This week’s Open Day at UCOL Wairarapa will have a focus on carpentry, as well as other vocational programmes available at the campus.

A kitset mini house will be amongst the activities on offer at Open Day which runs from 11 am to 1 pm on Wednesday 25 January. The materials for the five square metre house, donated to UCOL Wairarapa by timber company JNL, can be built and dismantled in less than a day and is used to teach Carpentry students.

Programme Leader Brett Tickner says anyone who wants to pick up a drill, a measuring tape or a hammer at the Open Day can lend a hand with the building.

Read More: “Building will be the biggie at UCOL Open Day”…

Whanganui UCOL Fine Arts graduate Tom Turner is recycling plastic water bottles into a unique and ever growing work of art.

BUILDING THE WALL: Wanganui artist Tom Turner is enlisting the community's help to build a wall of bottles and some creative conversations. Photo / Tracey Grant Whanganui Chronicle

Wailing Wall is an interactive sculpture, made from plastic water bottles, that enlists help from the public.

Tom invites anyone who wants to participate to write a message about anything, put it into an empty plastic drink bottle that has had pure New Zealand water in it, and glue it to the wall

Tom says the work has no specific theme but has generated discussion with the people who have added to the wall on issues as diverse as consumerism and the purity of water in New Zealand lakes and rivers.

“The wall has achieved my goal of ‘sculpting thoughts, speech and action’ by triggering a reaction from the participants,” he says.

Read More: “Messages flow into Wailing Wall”…