We Will Work With You: Wellington Media Collective 1978-1998

When an exhibition of Wellington Media Collective’s work opened at Adam Art Gallery in Wellington in October 2012, a list of clients and associates between 1978 and 1998 was unfurled as a newsprint banner the height of a double-storey wall. People stood reading it and were astonished. Any cause or organisation worth fighting for was there. 

We Will Work With You: Wellington Media Collective 1978–1998 tells the story of a group of young Kiwi designers and political activists committed to broadly defined left-wing principles and politics. They never wavered from the mission statement written in 1979: ‘We will work with you, not for you.’ It is their principle of collective action that unfurls through these pages.

In her chapter, Polly Cantlon asks, ‘Fon’t we need another Wellington Media Collective today?’ The answer is both yes; and look around: for example at the Occupy networks that proliferated after the 17 September 2011 occupation of New York City’s Zuccotti Park. The work goes on.

Published by Victoria University Press in conjunction with Wellington Media Collective.