LIFE BOYS DISPLAY

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31461, 30 August 1967, Page 16

LIFE BOYS DISPLAY

Movement’s Half-Century

About 600 examples of art, handwriting, model building and miscellaneous hobbies from Life Boys throughout New Zealand will be exhibited in the Durham street art gallery tomorrow evening and on Friday and Saturday. The exhibition, which is the first of its kind to be held on a national level, marks the 50th anniversary of the Life Boy movement. The exhibition will be officially opened by Chief Superintendent G. S. Austing of the Christchurch Police District at 7.30 p.m. tomorrow. The guest speaker will be the Mayor of Christchurch (Sir George Manning). The Canterbury area supervisor of the Life Boys (Mr W. R. Johns) will also speak and items will be presented by the choir of the 34th Christchurch team, winners of the Canterbury area choir competition.

The assistant area supervisor (Mr W. F. Bishop) said yesterday that all entries would be from boys between the ages of eight and II years. Most sections of the exhibition had no subject titles, and boys would be required to use their own imagination and creative skill.

All sections except the team models sections will be divided into junior, intermediate and senior groups. There will be first and second prizes of books in each section and the Activities Cup will be presented to the team winning the team model section. This cup is at present held by the 14th Christchurch team.

Mr Bishop said that the sections would be judged by persons with no direct contact with the movement. The prizes would be presented at 2.30 p.m. on Saturday by the vice-president of the New Zealand Boys’ Brigade (Mr J. L. Bush). Since the movement was started in 1917 by Mr F. C. Carey-Longmore the number of Life Boys teams has grown to more than 3500 teams representing about 82,000 boys. Mr Bishop said that in Christchurch there were 29 teams with about 700 boys.