FEATURE INTERVIEW

Anita in the House

If you’ve called our national office in the last two years, you probably spoke with Anita Evans, our administrator and key front-of-house operator. Anita hails from New Plymouth, in Taranaki, and came to Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington via Ōtautahi Christchurch. Her patience, good humour and love of heritage are appreciated by staff and the public daily. She talks with Anna Knox about her role and her motivations for working in heritage.

How did you come to work here? Happy coincidence! I was living and working in Ōtautahi Christchurch but planning to make the move here when this role opened up. I have always had a strong interest in heritage, especially in discovering the everyday experiences of people and how people lived their lives day to day. This is also why I chose to study anthropology, which for me is very similar to trying to understand the past, except you are participating alongside people in real time. What does your role with the organisation involve? Broadly speaking my role is to support staff by ensuring the dayto-day operations at Antrim run smoothly. I also man the national phone line, so a big part of my role is to help those who reach out to us have their questions answered by the right people. I never know what a day will bring, so you’re as likely to find me busy with emails as you are under a desk with a screwdriver! What are the best parts of your work? I’m lucky enough to give tours of Antrim as well as help out with Membership Services, so really for me it is the people I encounter as part of this. What does heritage mean to you? This is hard one. I think heritage to me is always a shared experience and a way to bring people together. It’s as much about connecting yourself to your own past and story as it is about enabling the same for others. The more we can share our histories without delegitimizing the experience of others, the more it can be a space to learn how difference can be celebrated. Do you have a favourite heritage place? Once again, a tricky one! The place that had the biggest impact on me would have to be Tawhiti Museum in Taranaki, where I grew up. Visiting and experiencing heritage is such an important part of understanding, especially when it comes to local history. While it isn’t a ‘heritage place’ in the traditional sense, it is certainly a space to immerse yourself in and nurture that spark of curiosity about the past. Where is your favourite nook in Antrim house? An easy one this time. Definitely the boardroom. The room really captures the story of Antrim’s history so far, and you get to see how every aspect has come together to make it what you see today. Who is the most interesting visitor you’ve had at Antrim? Every visitor is an interesting visitor! My job is to share Antrim with whoever walks through the door, but I must say children are always a highlight. For them, the security camera can be just as exciting as the servant’s staircase, so you always learn how to appreciate something in a new way. What do you hope for the future of heritage in Aotearoa New Zealand?

I think the wonderful thing about heritage is that we will always need to ask ourselves that question, because heritage isn’t only preservation; it is also a conversation about what matters enough to care for into the future and how we can achieve that. So, what I hope for the future is that we keep talking to each other about and advocating for what is important to us. When visitors come to Antrim House, sometimes they are disappointed to find we are a working office; they are expecting to look around a heritage home staged and preserved as it would have been when it was built in the early 20th century. And while I can’t show them the heritage they expected, having a conversation about why Antrim still matters can lead to new understandings. But unless you have that conversation, you’ll never know. n