Te Awamutu Museum digitises 130 years of local brass band history

Te Awamutu Brass Band member Chris Burrell (left) and supporter Pam Burrell with museums and heritage director Anne Blyth and collections manager Sarah Dawe.

More than 130 years of Te Awamutu Brass Band history has been preserved for future generations thanks to Te Awamutu Museum.

The museum offers a free digitisation service for historic artefacts.

The band was prompted to look into the service to care for its historic photographs, following a devastating fire at the Rotorua Brass Band rooms in 2022. The fire destroyed decades of photos and history.

Museum collections manager Sarah Dawe said the team were thrilled to help the group digitise 70 photographs that depicted past band members and events. Some of the images date back to the 1890s.

“Digitising historic material is important because it preserves the document or photograph for the future and makes the artefacts accessible for more people to view.”

The three-stage process includes cataloguing the photographs, checking the condition, and using specialist scanning equipment to take a high-quality scan.

Te Awamutu Brass steward Joyce Airey said it is great to know all its photos and stories were preserved for generations to come.

“I found the process very interesting, many of our old photos didn’t have dates, so we worked out the era and time based on the band’s uniforms. It was a great chance to review the brass band’s history.”

For more information on digitising your photographs, email museum@waipadc.govt.nz.