February 2014 - Director's update

In this update: the beginning of the centenary — 2014, formalised programme aims, heritage trails progress, funding updates and tracking progress of the National Memorial Park.
Welcome to the first update for 2014. Suddenly the date has a ring to it for anyone with an interest in the First World War centenary. Even though the centenary doesn’t start until August, I know we will see a steady increase in tempo as planning ramps up and WW100 projects in the community kick off during the year.
It was good to meet many of our Wellington-based partners in the WW100 programme at a morning tea earlier this month. The number of people there and a range of agencies represented showed how broad the WW100 team is. We look forward to working even more closely with you in this initial year of the centenary — including with those of you out of town who unfortunately had to miss out on the sausage rolls.

Mission, objectives and principles
Together with partner agencies we have finalised a succinct statement of the aims of the WW100 programme. The concepts in it have been implicitly guiding the development of the programme to date. They’re based on earlier drafts, but have been refined in light of experience.
You can find these in our ‘about’ section, and we encourage you to use this statement of mission, objectives and principles to underpin your work and messaging on the WW100 programme.

Heritage trails progress
There’s been universal excitement in the programme office and our partner agencies about the imaginative concepts for the heritage trails in Western Europe and at Gallipoli. These were completed before Christmas in the first phase of the project.
We’re now well into phase two. A request for proposals for the design and build phase is currently on the Government Electronic Tenders Service, GETS, and proposals must be in by Friday 21 February. More than 40 people took part in a briefing session in late January, and there has been considerable interest in downloading documents from the GETS website.
Over late February/early March we will be selecting the successful service provider, and plan to sign a contract with them by 31 March. The target dates for the products are the first quarter of 2015 for Gallipoli and the first quarter of 2016 for Western Europe.
The heritage trails are a major part of New Zealand’s international programme for the centenary, and will tell in a new and compelling way the story of New Zealand’s First World War involvement in these areas.

Lottery funding
Assessment is well under way on the third and final round of applications for dedicated First World War lottery funding. This is managed by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), but the WW100 programme office and other agencies are consulted as appropriate. There has been a lot of interest in this round, which once again demonstrates the level and diversity of community interest in participating in the centenary.
No decision has been made about whether the Lottery Grants Board will allocate any more money specifically for centenary projects, but the board will consider this question at the end of this financial year and will announce its decisions on future funding in July.

Community funding
Remember it’s not only lottery funding that can support WW100 projects. Just one example — at a recent WW100 meeting organised by the Wellington City Council I was very pleased to learn that the council has specifically dedicated some of its community funding to WW100 projects.
We’ve added this information to our funding sources page. Keep an eye on this for new sources that we learn about, and do tell us of any more you know about.

Progress on the National War Memorial Park
You can monitor progress on the undergrounding of Buckle Street through the website of the Memorial Park Alliance. The alliance’s Youtube channel has animations of the latest renderings of how the park will appear when finished.
Their latest newsletter reports on the moving and restoration of the Home of Compassion crèche, and there’s a First World War link in that story too. Suzanne Aubert, who founded the order, went to Rome in 1913 but found her planned return impeded by the war. The Colonist newspaper reported in May 1919 that she was finally on her way home: “The Rev. Mother was to have returned to New Zealand over four years ago, but was detained through the war”.

Other countries’ centenary programme offices
We’ve added to our website links to other countries’ centenary programme offices. There’s one per country, unless there are regional government equivalents, and the link at the bottom of the page is to a list of NGOs with centenary interests.
- Andrew Matheson, Director First World War Centenary Programme