Behind the scenes of Wētā’s design for war museum

The Wētā Workshop team behind Te Papa’s Gallipoli exhibit are busy at work on flowers and figurines for a new museum in the north of France.

New Zealand Liberation Museum–Te Arawhata will celebrate the story of Kiwi soldiers liberating the French town of Le Quesnoy in the final days of World War I.

To enter the town surrounded by medieval ramparts, the soldiers scaled the walls with ladders.

Senior creative director Andrew Thomas said the museum would tell a story of ‘‘humanity, respecting what the Kiwi troops did, and celebrating the relationship formed’’.

During the liberation, 196 men died. The museum will commemorate them with an outdoor sculpture of a ladder, which will be illuminated at night.

The museum will occupy a historic mansion in Le Quesnoy. It is one of the latest projects for Wētā Workshop’s location-based experience team, which was borne out of the Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War exhibit.

Parts for the museum, including a pounamu from Ngāti Waewae, have already been shipped to France, where they will be assembled in August ahead of official opening of the museum on October 11.

A giant fibreglass soldier is being built at Wētā Workshop. His costume would be in black and white, as if he had walked out of a war photograph, Thomas said.

The flowers pinned to his uniform – put there by French civilians in celebration of Le Quesnoy’s liberation – will be in full colour. An interactive display in one of the mansion’s rooms will ask people to write their own thoughts on a flower and pin it to a wall.

‘‘Kids were holding their hands after the liberation. It was so unexpected for the soldiers,’’ Thomas said.

‘‘The moment we encounter our soldier is that moment where he’s had all the flowers placed in his uniform, and he’s just taken aback by the friendship and the joy of the civilians.’’

A score is being composed to play in the background of the soldier’s sculpture, alongside snippets of French brass band songs that were played in celebration.

Residents of Le Quesnoy still remember the help from New Zealanders, and streets in the town are named after the country, soldiers, and even the All Blacks.

Spatial designer on the project, Georgia McNeill, described a site visit to Le Quesnoy where a resident invited them to see the foyer of his home.

‘‘It was full of New Zealand memorabilia, things we would think are tacky, like postcards and keyrings.

‘‘All packed into this tiny little foyer. I thought, ‘Woah’’.’

Freedom, friendship and future are the themes that will run through the museum, along with the symbol of the ladder.

A transparent 8m ladder, engraved with a poutama design representing new knowledge and perspectives, will be constructed in the centre of the building’s spiral staircase.

‘‘What we do is take the cinematic off the screen and bring it into the public, real places. It’s very cinematic to me that it was the simple analogue thing to do, using a ladder, but it worked,’’ Thomas said.

The museum will also feature photos from the liberation by wartime photographer Henry Armytage Sanders.

The museum will feature distinctive mediums and character in each of its many rooms. One wall, a replica of the red brick ramparts around the town, would feature backlit photographs of Kiwi soldiers on the Western Front ‘‘having some fun’’, Thomas said.

‘‘Between battles, you have to keep your sanity somehow, and that’s what the images area all about. Just showing them as humans and very much as Kiwis fooling around.’’