Teaching with Cultural Collections

Cultural Collections contains many thousands of items which you can use to engage students and enrich the learning experiences offered in courses across multiple disciplines.

old photos and manuscripts being used for teaching in the reading room

Staff can help to deliver hands-on or virtual sessions with material from our unique collections of archives and published works, digital media, artworks and more. These can be tailored to your learning objectives and assessments, and held in our spaces or yours.

There are multiple ways we can work with you to embed our taonga in your teaching, including:

  • Immersive workshops that provide students with stimulating, hands-on experiences using cultural collections and the skills to find and analyse such material in their studies and research.
  • Tours of the University Art Collection, tailored to various subjects, to give students an insight into the artworks and the curatorial process. 
  • Curating teaching resources, including from digitised collections such as the Archive of Māori and Pacific Sound and TV & Radio, for in-person or online classes.
  • Workshops on archival literacy and using primary sources to assist students in their research. 
  • Screening items live into your classroom or lecture theatre using our visualiser to support online or blended learning.
  • Copying for Talis reading lists to provide additional resources for students. 

It was a great experience with knowledgeable and approachable experts. My students were excited to be able to handle the primary source evidence.

Professor of History

Where can this take place?

You can bring your students to our learning spaces, or we can come to your in-person or online classes. 

How can I arrange this?

Please complete the Cultural Collections Teaching Request form.

Research support

To discuss how Cultural Collections can support your academic research, please contact us.