Design your own badge for your home team/club/kura

People have been wearing badges for centuries. They’re a very old form of identity making: showing who you are. They’re kind of like wearing a mini billboard. Maybe you have one of your favourite sports team or band or Pokémon?

Design a badge for a team you support or something you’re passionate about and wear it proudly!

Education type

Whānau challenge

Inspiration

Collections Online

Collections Online is a great place to start for ideas for your badges. We have over 1,000 badges by a Petone designer named Trevor Dick, for example. He made them in the 1960s and 1970s and include sports clubs, police departments, marching bands, darts clubs... even birdspotters!

View the Trevor Dick collection of badges

Other collections include brooches by Jacqui Chan(link is external) and brooches by Jane Dodd(link is external).

Browse ‘badges’ on Collections Online

Blue Heron Dart Club decorative badge, by Trevor Dick, 1946/1979, Petone. Te Papa (GH020704)

Wanganui Cosmopolitan Club decorative badge, by Trevor Dick, 1946/1979, Petone. Te Papa (GH021501)

Hutt Valley Pony Club Inc. decorative badge, by Trevor Dick, 1946/1979, Petone. Te Papa (GH021857)

We Are Everywhere badge, by the National Gay Rights Coalition, about 1979. Gift of Lesbian and Gay Archives of New Zealand, 2017. Te Papa (GH025206)

Taranaki Primary School Rugby Rep. decorative badge, by Trevor Dick, 1946/1979, Petone. Te Papa (GH010716)

Foxton Beach Bowling Club decorative badge, by Trevor Dick, 1946/1979, Petone. Te Papa (GH010754)

Other collections include brooches by Jacqui Chan and brooches by Jane Dodd.

Videos

History curator Stephanie Gibson talks about badges and ‘tiny activism’.

Jeweller Jacqui Chan created the Host a Brooch project together with Caroline Billing of Christchurch gallery The National, in response to the Canterbury earthquakes.

Filmed in his studio, Warwick Freeman talks about how his works address issues of identity.

Ngāti Toa carvers Tana and Hermann Salzmann carve the waharoa (Māori gateway) for the exhibition Whiti Te Ra! The story of Ngāti Toa Rangatira.

Discover the art of tīvaevae (quilting) with Cook Islands women from the Wellington region.

Other resources

Te Papa and Auckland Museum staff submissions!

‘Craft & Kittens Club’ badge, by and courtesy of Jane Grofsky

‘Masks – the must-have accessory of 2020’ badge, by and courtesy of Bev Moon

‘In My Bubble’ badge, by and courtesy of Anonymous

‘Covid-19 Survivors Club’ badge, by and courtesy of Steph Gibson

‘Ban the Rona’ badge, by and courtesy of Michael Rogers

‘All by myself’ badge, by and courtesy of Daniel Crichton-Rouse