Revolutions Per Minute: the Counterculture in New Zealand 1960-1975

Nick Bollinger is a Wellington freelance writer & researcher. He was awarded a FoTL Research Grant this year, to work on a book chronicling the development of the counterculture in New Zealand 1960-1975. The term counterculture originated in the 1960s and became widely used to identify a collection of groups and individuals broadly sharing a belief in an alternative society. His book will trace the roots of countercultural ideas, showing how these were disseminated in this country, how they intersected and diverged. It will look critically at how these ideas evolved in practice, how some flourished and others failed, and the effect these had on New Zealand society as a whole, at the time and up to the present day. He discussed his research into existing interviews, periodicals, photographs, letters and memoirs;, and his own interviews of key figures.