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Ten years on – UC marks earthquake anniversary

22 February 2021

In memory of those lost in the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake, the University of Canterbury’s Tumu Whakarae Vice-Chancellor Professor Cheryl de la Rey and Tumu Tuarua Kaunihera Pro-Chancellor Steve Wakefield laid a puapua whakamahara (wreath) and held a minute’s silence with staff and students at the Roimata memorial sculpture at the Ilam campus.

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Unicycleway The Uni cycleway was dedicated to the Canterbury community following the Canterbury earthquakes.

UC placed wheelbarrows of red roses along University Drive for staff and students to put in road cones, a Christchurch tradition that evolved as a way to mark earthquake anniversaries.

CEISMIC archive continues to expand

On the 10th anniversary of the earthquake, Empowered Christchurch and the South Brighton Residents’ Association have donated documentation to the ever-growing CEISMIC archives, held at UC’s College of Arts.

The world-leading and award-winning earthquake archive, CEISMIC, has made an online collection of tens of thousands of stories, video, audio, documents and images relating to the Canterbury earthquakes publicly available.

22 February wreath laying UC’s Tumu Whakarae Vice-Chancellor Professor Cheryl de la Rey and Tumu Tuarua Kaunihera Pro-Chancellor Steve Wakefield laid a puapua whakamahara (wreath) and held a minute’s silence with staff and students at the Roimata memorial sculpture on campus.

CEISMIC includes the archives of 38 government, community and research organisations. This wide-ranging taonga includes GPS Boomerang’s aerial photos, the Festival of Transitional Architecture (FESTA), the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC)’s Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Learning Legacy, and the Ministry of Culture and Heritage Quakestories archive, which alone offers some 500 stories and 200 photographs. Another archive is Movers and Shakers: Women’s Stories from the Christchurch Earthquakes: https://quakestudies.canterbury.ac.nz/store/object/194937.

A special component of CEISMIC is QuakeBox, a project that recorded the stories of 750 people around Christchurch after the earthquakes. The UC QuakeBox team is now conducting a follow-up, and has re-interviewed almost 120 of the original interviewees to track their progress and wide-ranging post-quake experiences. https://quakestudies.canterbury.ac.nz/store/collection/235

 The CEISMIC consortium, led by UC, includes the National Library, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Christchurch City Libraries, Te Papa, Canterbury Museum, and the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre at UC.

Significant collections in CEISMIC

Final home for material about earthquakes from:

  • Heritage NZ
  • Academic research
    • Coastal Quakes
    • Geology research
    • Understanding Place
    • QuakeBox
    • Conference presentations
      • Renewal and Resilience – UC Earthquake Research Forum 2012
      • UC Earthquake Lecture Series 2011
      • UC Lifelines Week 2013
      • Canterbury Earthquakes Symposium
      • People in Disasters
      • SmartNet Seismics in the City
    • Academic papers
    • Student projects
  • Projects giving people the opportunity to tell their personal stories
    • Women’s Voices
    • QuakeBox
    • Shaken Heart: Earthquake Stories from the Heart of Lyttelton
    • QuakeStories
  • Media
    • Press
    • Star
    • Community Newspapers
    • Sean Scanlon’s interviews with journalists
  • Christchurch initiatives
    • Gapfiller
    • Whole House Reuse
    • Crack’d for Christchurch
    • Cultural Collections Recovery Centre
    • IHC Earthquake Reflections Group
    • Empowered Christchurch
    • FESTA
    • All Right?
  • Photographs
    • BeckerFraserPhotos – inside the Red Zone
    • Aerial photos from GPS Boomerang
    • Focus 360 panoramas
    • Many smaller collections documenting the damage, recovery and rebuild, and everyday life post-earthquakes
  • And much more: artworks, creative writing, blogs, videos and sound recordings.

o   ECan

o   NZDF

o   US Embassy

o   CDHB - Canterbury Health System Earthquake Memories

o   SPCA

o   Wellington Emergency Management Office

o   SCIRT

o   CTU

o   DPMC - Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Learning Legacy

o   Empowered Christchurch

o   South Brighton Residents' Association

UC Communications
  • All media enquiries are directed to the UC Communications team.
  • Email media@canterbury.ac.nz for media enquiries (business hours, Monday - Friday)
  • Call 03 369 3631 for media enquiries (business hours, Monday - Friday)
  • Call 027 503 0168 for urgent media enquiries (after-hours, Monday - Sunday)

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