Spiral Collectives

Welcome! Spiral is a small artist-led charity, founded 50 years ago by poet and activist Heather McPherson (1942-2017), to present women’s writing and images ‘positively’ and cover an amalgam of arts.  We are warmed by the āwhinatanga of many kind people who support Spiral, some of them for decades.

The Spiral Collectives Trust is a registered charitable trust, CC62215. Receipted donations by New Zealand taxpayers are eligible for tax benefits.

For more information, please check out our website link above, at left.

 

Spiral's first edition of the bone people, from 1984. Cover art by Keri Hulme. Like many copies, well-read & used.

Keri Hulme, 1947–2021, from Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe, Orkney and Lancashire, described herself as 'A writer, painter and whitebaiter...interested in chance and dreams and change, and, above all, People. Particularly that wonderful person Papatūānuku’. She spent her life in Aotearoa New Zealand. 

Keri achieved international acclaim with her only novel, the bone people, published by a Spiral Collective in 1984. The next year, the book was the first novel from Aotearoa New Zealand to win the prestigious British Booker Prize. Among other awards it also won Italy’s Chianti Ruffino-Antico Fattore Prize for ‘renowned literary works that best express the values of the environment and nature’. (The next year's winner was Nobel prizewinner Toni Morrison.)

 

Translated into many languages, most recently Spanish and Arabic, the bone people also attracted over 100 offers for the screen rights. Keri rejected them all, because she didn’t want a child actor to be asked to play Simon, the abused child at the heart of the book. She waited for technology to catch up, and then offered Spiral the animation rights. 

Honoured and delighted to renew our commitment to Keri’s voice and vision and to continue to safeguard its integrity, Spiral has approached the adaptation with the same loving care that we offered over four decades ago. We do this with the gracious support of Keri’s whānau, her family, which was at the centre of her life and is now the caretaker of her legacy. Through her whānau we remain accountable to Keri herself. 

 

After long and thorough exploration into how best to adapt the bone people, by and for a new generation, we've decided to establish the characters and their world in a graphic novel.  We'll publish this adaptation online first, for free, in parts, then use it to inform the animation. 

 

No single author can do this work. It will be done collectively. We’re now ready to start production of a pilot chapter, with highly skilled narrative and visual facilitators who share ancestry with Keri.

Spiral, a registered charity, is historically a volunteer group. But for this demanding task we will pay workers well and work hard to keep them safe and supported in every way. We’ve calculated that to deliver the work according to our values the minimum necessary budget for this stage of development is $120,000. There are, of course, areas where we’d love to go above and beyond this. 

 

This is where you come in. We need your help, please. If you're one of the many many people love this book or recognise it as a classic and if you welcome its adaptation or are curious about it,  please consider joining our benefactors. We’ll deeply appreciate any donation you can offer. Unless you want to be anonymous, we'll acknowledge  your generosity, your aroha, in the published work. If you donate in someone's memory, we’ll also include their name.

Almost all our books are now freely available to read and download at Te Puna o Waiwhetū Christchurch Art Gallery. We deeply appreciate the gallery's support.

A selection of our recent publications