Vale Glen Johns

Glen Johns with Bob Williams at Working Spaces 3

Museums & Galleries NSW is deeply saddened by the news of Glen John's death on Monday 31st January. Since the late 1990s, Glen has played a significant role with the museums of the Lachlan Chapter of Museums Australia (NSW). Always ready to challenge the status quo, Glen's enthusiasm, thoughtful insight and wry sense of humour were always appreciated.

Glen became involved with the Boorowa and District Historical Society in the late 1990s and was instrumental in obtaining a grant from the Commonwealth Federation fund to refurbish the museum. The funding led to the redevelopment of the museum's exhibitions to highlight the local wool industry and the introduction of new technology through a DVD about Boorowa. Always keen to learn and improve the museum, Glen approached the Powerhouse Museum and M&G NSW to run a workshop focused on the museum's Hamilton Hume textile collection. And so began Glen's enthusiasm for coordinating workshops.

Hearing that M&G NSW had begun a standards program, Glen approached us about running the program with the museums of the newly formed Lachlan Chapter of Museums Australia (NSW). Along with others from the chapter, Glen's willingness to participate and capacity to encourage everyone else to join in made for a great year with the Standards program.

Within museum circles, Glen will probably be best remembered as the man behind the Working Spaces workshop based conferences held at St Clements, Galong. As a man who believed anything was possible, Glen approached us in 2006 about an idea for a volunteer museums conference with "no talking heads" and plenty of practical workshops. Before we knew it, he had convinced the major cultural institutions in Canberra to contribute staff to run the various workshops and the Working Spaces conference was born. The conferences are live in over a weekend and provide opportunities for museum workers to get together not only to learn but to have a good time. Trivia nights, Q&A sessions and Postcards from home have given those involved the opportunity to have some fun along the way. With four conferences under their belt, Glen has left the Lachlan Chapter and the volunteer museum community of NSW with a wonderful legacy.

Our thoughts are with the Lachlan Chapter, especially Glen's wife Elizabeth at this difficult time. Glen's unique and enthusiastic approach to life will never be replaced but I feel his legacy will allow a little of him to stay with us into the future.

Working Spaces 4 Conference

Sarah-Jane and I drove down to Galong last Friday to attend the famous Working Spaces 4 conference at St Clements Monastery. This is the fourth year this highly popular conference for museum volunteers has been put on, organised by the Museums Australia Lachlan Chapter.

St Clements Monastery is located about 20 minutes from Harden in the Southern Tablelands. It is a huge red brick building surrounded by farmland, complete with a grotto and a rather filmic gothic cemetery. It even has a small museum which tells the fascinating story of the original residents of ‘Galong castle’.

Around 40 participants from as far as Orange and Victoria were there and it was great for Sarah-Jane and I to catch up with some old friends and put some new faces to names. Treacherous weather meant some attendees had a somewhat interesting journey, with several people delayed by the conditions.

The conference covered many areas of museum practice such as paper conservation, writing Oral Histories, Significance, working with schools and graphic design; and aimed to provide volunteers with “hands-on” practical experience.

We presented a morning session on the Art of Winning and Writing Grants. We were lucky to have a really great group of enthusiastic volunteers from places such as Willoughby, Liverpool, Temora, Queanbeyan and Lambing Flat, who were clearly dedicated to their organisations and keen to develop different projects to keep their museums thriving. We discussed different funding avenues they could try, went through our Grants & Funding booklet and detailed the VIM grants now available from M&G NSW.

We gave them some tips on what makes a great grant application (and not so great ones!). More resources here.

A highlight of the weekend was ‘Postcards from Home’, held after dinner on Saturday night. Representatives from each museum presented for 2 minutes (precisely timed by a cow bell!) on what they felt was their most interesting collection item. It was then put to the vote, decided by the participants and also the presenters. There were so many captivating and intriguing stories, provoking a lot of debate during the deliberation! Winners were the Lambing Flat museum, who took the prize for ‘People’s Choice’ with a photo of the highly significant “Roll Up” banner, from the Lambing Flat riots of 1861,

and Cootamundra Heritage Centre taking out the ‘Presenter’s Choice’ with their unique set of 163 handmade dioramas depicting aspects of Cootamundra’s social history.

Big congratulations to the MA Lachlan Chapter, organisers of Working Spaces on another hugely successful conference, in particular to Glen Johns who is stepping down from the committee this year.

Sarah-Jane, Glen Johns and Phoebe