’70s live again in Dunedin Study exhibition

If your foot starts tapping when you hear the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever, there is a good chance you were alive in the 1970s and survived the experience.

That decade is lovingly re-created in a "Slice of Life" exhibition, devoted to the Dunedin Study, which opens to the Dunedin public today in the former Smiths City complex, sited between McBride St and Macandrew Rd, South Dunedin.

The 1970s exhibit, part of a wide-ranging exhibition, features not only Bee Gees music, but also black and white reruns of a Selwyn Toogood It’s In the Bag quiz show, filmed in Dunedin.

An earlier form of the exhibition had, since 2019, toured the Canterbury Museum, Auckland’s Museum of Transport and Technology and Nelson Provincial Museum, attracting about 320,000 visits.

The Dunedin Study began in 1972 and follows more than 1000 participants throughout their lives.

Exhibition curator Sean Hogan said that after a "frantic couple of weeks" the big show was ready to open again, with "new science stories and interactives just for Dunedin and 50-year-old wallpaper".

Show organisers spared no effort to get the 1970s details right, not only the wallpaper, and fondue set, but also with a "packet of cigarettes" re-created specially, because more modern cigarette packets are covered with graphic warnings.

Some of the room sets, including from the 1970s, were so evocative that some visitors were drawn back to their childhood and moved to tears "but I think they were happy tears".

The show is supported by many groups, including the University of Otago and the New Zealand International Science Festival, a Lottery Environment and Heritage grant, and by businessman Martin Dippie.

Also opening today as part of the exhibition is a new pop-up reading zone, which will operate until July 18.

This initiative is part of the Read Share Grow project, which encourages reading for pleasure among children aged 3-7 in South Dunedin.

Dunedin City Council creative partnerships manager Kirsty Glengarry said the zone was "a great opportunity" to promote the reading project.

Evidence from the Dunedin Study shows that by age 65, the lowest 25% of readers in childhood were earning $35,000 less than the most proficient childhood readers.

Read Share Grow has distributed 10,000 books through schools, early childhood centres, businesses, community groups and events in the South Dunedin area.

john.gibb@odt.co.nz