On the 25 September, twenty of us flew up to Wellington on a Media and Textiles enrichment trip. Little did we know how much we would experience and get out of the trip when we signed up.

It was an exciting first day as we landed in Wellington at 7:45am on Wednesday. We got stuck in straight away, exploring central Wellington. Our first experience was at the amazing Te Papa museum where we were lucky enough to be taken on a behind-the-scenes textiles tour.  

Afterwards, we were allowed some time to explore the museum which was absolutely incredible, particularly the new Gallipoli exhibition. We then went to Toi Whaakari- the Wellington School of Drama. We were led on a detailed tour of the school which entailed looking at the many departments it had to offer (dance, textiles, drama). We were greeted with a well-needed rest while we prepared for dinner and WOW- the definite highlight of the trip. The show was absolutely mesmerising and it was awesome to see ex-girl, Hanna Nichols dancing on the stage. I would 100% recommend seeing the show at least once in your life as the music, dancing, props, and of course, costumes were seriously amazing.

The following day we took part in a VSF course where we designed our own virtual world on computers before heading out for a tour of Massey University. We then had time to do some more exploring of the city before making our way to yet another tour at Weta workshops.

On our last day, we took the cable car to Victoria University and a young woman gave us an interesting and informative talk about all that Victoria has to offer. The rest of the day included more exploring, a tour of parliament, and a walk along Wellington harbour before we flew home at 5 pm.

This trip was not only extremely fun and exciting, but it also opened our eyes to the wider opportunities available to us. I know many of the students fell in love with some of the Universities and Wellington itself which made their decision when leaving school that much easier. It was awesome to see all the paths that Media Studies and Textiles Technology could take you down, such as costume design, working with virtual reality, working doing design at organisations such as Weta workshop, and more! I had an absolute blast in Wellington and highly recommend this enrichment trip to anyone who may be even slightly interested!

Huge thanks to Ms Joyce and Mrs Laiman for being fun, patient and lovely chaperones and taking us on this trip and thank you to Ms Miller for allowing us to experience this opportunity, it won’t be one I shall forget anytime soon.