(From left) Kirstie Ross, Hocken Head Curator of Special Collections, Anna Blackman, 
Hocken Head Curator Archives, and Jane Wild, Chair, UNESCO Memory of the World. 
Photo: Otago Daily Times, 29 August 2024.

A functions was held at the University of Otago on 28 August to celebrate Janet Frame: her 100th birthday, the opening of an exhibition and the announcement of the UNESCO Memory of the World Aotearoa New Zealand four 2024 inscriptions, including the Janet Frame papers held at the Hocken Collections.

The University of Otago has also reported this event and achievement.

Jack Ward has created a very descriptive video highlighting the UNESCO inscription of Janet Frame’s papers and the exhibition in the de Beer Gallery, University of Otago Library.

The four 2024 inscriptions are:

The William James Harding Collection of Whanganui-Rangitikei photographs and negatives is our first inscription for a collection held across three institutions. The people and places through the 1850s-1890s documented by William Harding are from the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, the Whanganui Regional Museum and the Alexander Heritage and Research Library Te Rerenga Mai o te Kāuru in the Whanganui District Library. This collection of more than 6,500 images gives remarkable insights into the people, the region and the Whanganui River.

This record of Whanganui resonates in Whanganui UNESCO City of Design.

The Janet Frame: Literary and Personal Papers inscription is timely in 2024, one hundred years since Janet Paterson Frame’s birth in Dunedin. The papers archived at Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago include original manuscripts, correspondence and household documentation.

Dunedin is the UNESCO City of Literature and the Hocken Collections hold significant New Zealand literary collections, including the Charles Brasch literary and personal papers inscribed in 2013.

Tangata Whenua: The People of the Land was broadcast as a documentary series on television fifty years ago in 1974. When it screened it reached a remarkable audience of one million viewers in a population on just three million. The kaumatua and kuia interview in this landmark series can still be heard today thanks to preservation work by Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision and the TVNZ+ platform. Their kōrero directed by Barry Barclay is vivid and historically poignant in 2024.

It is appropriate to recognise the pioneering television production work of John O’Shea of Pacific Films in Wellington UNESCO City of Film.

The Frank Sargeson Collection is also inscribed in 2024. The Sargeson Archive comprises literary drafts, correspondence and photographs held at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. Frank was a friend and mentor to many New Zealand writers, including Janet Frame and Karl Stead. Janet lived on Sargeson’s property on Esmonde Road, Takapuna from April 1955 to July 1956, where she worked on her first full length novel Owls do Cry (1975).