Payroll giving means you can make regular donations from your pay to non-profit 'donee' organisations and receive immediate tax benefit. Tax credits for payroll donations are calculated at 33.33 cents for each dollar donated which is deducted from your PAYE.

Magdalena Aotearoa Trust has Inland Revenue-approved donee status. So if your employer has taken up this option, you might like to think about making a regular donation to the trust in this way.

The National Library of New Zealand is conducting a national web harvest between 12 and 25 May. They'll
harvest every domain in the .nz country code, and some others from .com, .net and .org. If your site is outside .nz, you can apply to have your site harvested too. Read on to find out about the harvest, an awesome resource for the future...

The National Library exists to preserve New Zealand's social and cultural history, whether in the form of books, newspapers and photographs, or of websites, blogs and videos.

Those of you at the networking meeting will have heard Helen talk about this festival. The very first festival was in Cardiff and it is natural that a celebration of this coming of age again be hosted in Wales.

The Festival will be in two parts:

12th – 14th August 2011 in Aberystwyth University. This will be a conference and a chance to evaluate the legacy of the Magdalena.

15th-21st August 2011 will be a Festival of new work in Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff – the birthplace of the Project. There will be space given to all generations; both established and emerging women artists.

The latest issue 'Theatre - Women - Letters' is available through Magdalena Aotearoa.

‘Letters are personal and secret forms of communication, characteristics which enable us to hear the voices of some seemingly silent women on the past and present. The design of individual letters and of different alphabets, seen as paintings or graphic design, emerge in this issue as action, inspiration, sound, awareness, availability and rhythm to emphasise the individuality, age, tradition and cultural
circumstances of each author.’ Julia Varley

I have been looking at the lovely and relentlessly-reminding-me scroll of things I said I wanted to do to develop - and am keen to record one of the steps taken. I found another place to tell a tale, to perform. Work! amazingly, and even through a meeting request had to be sent and a meeting room booked, it worked. I told a variation of the Sunday Afternoon Drive tale I shared at the Gathering. to a tiny group of three women. AND I have made another appt to tell another next month. actually, this one is more than a step, it's a surge!
How does any one else go?

Tonight I read a piece from the Guardian called this. "Art criticism is not a democracy" - hmmm.
"You might think it's arrogance or snobbery that leads me to criticise a work of art, and maybe it is – but I'm still right," says Jonathan Jones.
His thoughts are interesting, as are some of the comments. Are critics born not made as he suggests? Is being brutal the right way to review new art?
Here's a reader's comment:

The paper newsletter has started its journey to your place (if you are on the mailing list of course).
Folded and enveloped in the delightful salon space of ReDunn Fashion - currently open for business at 162 Riddiford St, Newtown, as part of a community art project. Also selling artworks by Kazz Funky Blue.
Magdalena Aotearoa newslettering is always a special performance - no two times the same. The creative atmosphere and the glorious clothing to drape oneself in added much to the form and dynamic of this piece. So did the mirrors... and the biscuits.

This morning the weather was wild and the sky so wild wet and grey I felt I was inside of a cloud, like being in a whiteout on a mountain, but not as white. I thought again about our milk experiencing from the Gathering 09.
This afternoon, I read about a book called Milk and Melancholy by Kenneth Hayes. It's not in wgtn city library but maybe I will ask them to get it. It looks at milk through the art of photography. Starting with 'Edgerton's famous photograph' which turns out to be the one of a time-stopped splash on milk looking like a little crown on a white pond.

On Monday we had our open stage event and closing night party. We had a great time. Hula hoops helped.

           Jack Trolove offered us the opportunity to explore working with some everyday materials to create visual starting points for thinking around an idea. We 'played' with salt, milk and light. White things. Common things. Things linked to sayings: take it with a grain of salt; milk of human kindness; shed some light on the subject... things linked to everyday actions and reactions.

What is whiteness?

If you look closely at the second image you will see there are two people - one in the mirror.