Heritage et AL

Auckland celebrates its LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer) communities during the Pride Festival in February. Pride Festival has become an important part of the Auckland Libraries’ calendar, with a number of events such as pop-up libraries and storytimes programmed over the course of the month (including at the  same same but different festival ). However, as recently as the early 1980s not only was it legal to discriminate against a person on the basis of their (declared or suspected) sexual orientation, certain ‘homosexual behaviour’ was criminalised. At the time that Wellington Central MP Fran Wilde introduced the Homosexual Law Reform Bill in 1985, there was fierce debate both among politicians and throughout society about what the passing of such a bill might mean for New Zealand. In the Sir George Grey Special Collections reading room, Central City Library, the Homosexual Law Reform clippings scrapbook will be on display during February. ...

Chris Bourke has written a great  profile on the  AudioCulture  website about Auckland entertainment industry entrepreneur and local government politician Phil Warren. Many of the images included in the article are from the Phil Warren manuscript (Click here and type "NZMS 1214" into the search field), donated to  Sir George Grey Special Collections  after Warren's death in 2002. Ref: NZMS 1214, Phil and an unknown friend dining in the early 1960s, Sir George Grey Special Collections. Born in 1938, Warren came from a family in which music and politics were important - his parents were performers and his grandfather's wife's family were political figures in Auckland. As a teenager, Warren worked for the music retailer Beggs and through a contact at this job he was hired as a travelling salesman. When he was 18 years old, Warren met with an Australian agent of Clef Records in an attempt to establish a New Zealand branch of the company. The agent was surp...