Fun & games exhibition

Fun & games was a free exhibition of games, books, photos, manuscripts, and more drawn from Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections around the region. It opened on 11 December 2019 and ran until 1 March 2020 at Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero | Central City Library.

Image: Dennis Beytagh. School journal, number 2 part 2, 1959. School Publications Branch, Education Dept. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections.

What games did your great-great-grandparents play? What are your favourite games to play today? Children of every time, place, and culture have loved to play. Some games endure across the generations and are handed down through families, while others emerge and transform, or are forgotten as technology, society, and childhood change. They in turn help shape our culture and communities and the stories of Tāmaki Makaurau.

Image: Unknown photographer. From: Auckland Kindergarten Association. Photograph album, 1931-1936. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, NZMS 1275.

Image: G B Scott Publications Limited. A group of Māori children playing tī rākau (stick game) at Rotorua, 1960s-1970s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, 996-429.

Image: Rykenberg Photography. Unidentified girl playing with a hula hoop, 1959. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, 1269-K169-6.

Come into the gallery on Level 2, remember some old games and learn about some new ones. Use the blackboard to leave us a note about games you like. Read the colourful quotes on the walls and an instruction book for board games from 1786, see some 19th century knights on horseback with a royal connection, learn about the hula hoop craze of the 1950s, compare Māori and Pākeha versions of mū tōrere (draughts), and try your hand at putting on a sock puppet show. Listen to playground rhymes and play retro PacMan.

Listen to Harriet Rogers, one of the exhibition curators, discuss what we can expect to see and experience and tell us about some of her favourite items on display.

Listen to the track here

Be sure to check out our free events so that you don’t miss out. You can have a go at sock puppet and kite making, learn with Lego bricks, join the Kōrero bike at Silo Park and score points on the pinball and arcade machines in the library. Tākarokaro mai, and in the words of Maurice Sendak, “Let the wild rumpus start!”