LAUNCH TIME!

Finally, launch day is (was, last Thursday!) here!!!  The staff launch of the label trail was a spectacular success and the star(s) of the show were, of course, the labels themselves.  As you can see from Karen's efforts, they feature good yarns and they're certainly eye catching!

In response to the dentist's chair and drill in the 'Taranaki Life' gallery

Of course, the staff were also subjected to Kate and my cryptic clue writing efforts and turns out those clues were extra specially cryptic!  However, with a bit of help from some friends (ie. me running all over the building) everyone managed to finish their scavenger hunts in the end.  I'm not sure if the beer helped people in their quest to decipher the clues ...

Me running (so fast I'm blurry!) to assist the scavenger hunters

The kids seemed to have a grand old time ...

There were some great collaborative efforts and good cross-team brainstorming ...

Kate and I got some fantastic feedback from Thursday night's scavenger hunters ... and Friday was spent frantically simplifying the hunts for the public launch on Saturday!

However, all the hard work paid off ... over the weekend the Hosts, North Wing Volunteers, Jocelyn and I sent out HUNDREDS of scavenger hunters to explore the fabulous labels our talented staff had written.  A bit of awful weather helped us too!  The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive - parents are loving having something structured to do with their kids, people are exploring the galleries and library nooks as never before, they're enjoying the stories in the labels and, of course, everyone loves a good Ruru badge! 

We had one champion scavenger hunter on Saturday.  Phaeora Sims, a 9 year old from Hamilton, spent about three hours roaming around Puke Ariki on a quest to finish ALL FOUR scavenger hunts.  She was desperate to collect all those badges!  Here she is, proudly modelling her Ruru bounty:

So, another  M A S S I V E  thank you to the wonderful staff who wrote labels ... you've made this project a success!