KEVIN STENT/Stuff
Wellington-based illustrator Jem Yoshioka with a digital billboard at Lower Hutt’s Queensgate. The billboard features her art work, which was commissioned for the country s Covid-19 vaccination campaign.
As the Government releases its next wave of public health messages around its Covid-19 vaccine roll-out, Kiwis are receiving art – along with immunisation information – in their mailboxes, and in their local shopping malls. The artworks illustrating messages of hope, freedom and life after the virus are appearing on pamphlets and billboards, flanked by the Covid-19 response team’s signature black and yellow colours. “The idea was to demonstrate what we can all have – that freedom of being together again once you’re vaccinated,” said Wellington-based artist Ruby Jones, who decided to illustrate the country’s national vaccination letter-drop brochure with an illustration of children playing in a park, with adults watching them.
The incident has had a lasting impact on Sarniak-Thomson who continues to suffer pain in her hip and now needs a walking stick to aid her mobility. “I’ve had to stop playing the organ at church because I can’t get up the stairs. I find it annoying because I used to enjoy it.”
MONIQUE FORD / Fairfax NZ/Stuff
Sarniak-Thomson said Stride owed a duty of care to its customers, and was disappointed by the company’s response. With another person being knocked down, it appeared nothing had been done to make the doors safer, she said. Sarniak-Thomson has learned to live with the discomfort but what rankles her most is the denial of responsibility and the lack of common courtesy to check in on her after she was injured on and by the mall’s property.