Alison Booth

personal information

Biography

 Alison Booth joined NZTRI in October 2009 as a PhD student. Her PhD, New Zealand Cultural Performance Networks: Event Production and the Indian Diaspora, explores the processes and relationships that support the production of cultural events, with specific reference to events that are of interest to and/or produced by New Zealand’s Indian communities.    

 

The main aim of this study is to understand how Indian cultural event stakeholders create production networks through cultural performances. The objectives of the research are:  to describe the process and context through which local and global network formations create Indian cultural performance events; to identify what kinds of cultural performance are produced and designed; to understand who produces these cultural events and how relationships affect cultural outputs and finally; how cultural representation affects event management and access to production resources. A graphic representational model will be generated to provide a new method for the analysis of events and the representation of the complex socio-economic interactions that generate cultural performances. It will also have implications for providing insight into the relationships between one of New Zealand’s largest ethnic communities and the nation’s government agencies, creative industries, and arts initiatives. 

 

Alison holds a Masters in Creative and Performing Arts with honours from the University of Auckland speciaising in Arts Management with a primary world music production focus. Alison is a performer as well as an event producer. She has been involved in numerous event collaborations across the event industry including conferences, concerts, and national tours. She worked as a promotion coordinator for several years at the University of Auckland holding a variety of roles including producing small performance events primarily within the Indian community as well as large public events for the Knowledge Wave Conference, concert collaboration with The Edge, community workshops with WOMAD, international events for the New Zealand Asia Institute and exhibitions and performances with the Auckland Museum.

 

Alison is a lecturer in Event Management in the School of Hospitality and Tourism at Auckland University of Technology. She has presented her work internationally and she writes on the performing arts and on the production of culture and global contexts.