17 May 2012

Battling Wellywood

9/11/2011 9:37:00 a.m.

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The two winning designs to go head-to-head with Wellywood in a final vote.

The two winning designs to go head-to-head with Wellywood in a final vote.

THE public may have voted on the alternative options for Wellywood, but a member of the panel charged with selecting the finalists is labelling the selection process a farce.
Panel member Andy Boreham, who led the anti-Wellywood sign protest, has accused the airport company of withholding up to a third of the public entries it received for an alternative to Wellywood. The panel was charged with selecting five finalists from over 300 submitted by the public and these were put to a public vote last week. The two winning designs, one with simply the word ‘Wellington’ with the final letters blown about by the wind, and the other the eye of a Taniwha, will battle it out against the original ‘Wellywood’ concept in a final vote, the results of which will be announced on November 19.
However, Boreham says the airport only gave the panel those designs deemed “suitable” and his request to see all of the entries, including those calling for no sign, was turned down.
“There were 316 entries received but the panel only saw 232,” Boreham says. “That leaves 84 unaccounted for. I’ve had to work out that around one-third of the entries from the public suggested ‘no sign’ or similar, making it by far the most popular entry in terms of submissions.”
He says on social sites and on-line media the public had also voted overwhelmingly for no sign at all and for the hill above the Miramar Peninsular be left bare. The airport has always stated that no sign was not an option in the process.
Fellow panel member, Dave Gibson, says he understood the panel did have access to all of the submissions, but he had not looked at those calling for no sign.
“We were always working within a strict process which was not the most ideal,” Gibson says. “I would have preferred the Wellywood option to be part of a general vote rather than it being placed in the position of a friend of the airport.”
Kat Lintott, a spokesperson for the airport company, says all of the panel members had access to all of the submissions throughout the process “and still do.”
“We have made this a very transparent process and each panel member designed, agreed and approved each step of the Wellywood or What competition.”
Lintott says at the first meeting of the panel each member had agreed that no sign would not be an option.
“We want to celebrate the Wellington region and doing nothing would not be the Wellington way,” Lintott says.
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Cover Story

Best of Wellington 2011

Briefs

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