Accessing funding in Batemans Bay

Show me the Money - Access to Funding is a workshop we put on every year in a different part of NSW. Previous Standards participants, local museums, galleries and community arts groups are given the opportunity to hear from a range of funding providers and even chat with them about potential projects for funding. 

Andrew, Cassie and I had a beautiful drive down the coast to Batemans Bay the day before the workshop, and also managed to have a good look around the Old Courthouse Museum. The museum successfuly completed the Standards Program last year and have a range of projects on the go. Our visit coincided with the opening of their new room built especially for their volunteers. 

We also had to be dragged away from Bozo the resident dog who was most disarming. 

Delegates chat with Dianne Dahlitz about the Community Heritage Grant program.

We had a great line up of speakers at the workshop – Dianne Dahlitz who manages the Community Heritage Grants from the National Library; Einar Docker from the Powerhouse Museum’s regional services; Grainne Brundson from Arts NSW, Andrew Gray from South East Arts who represented Regional Arts NSW; and Bea Brickhill from AbaF who spoke about how arts organisations can build relationships with businesses.

One of the highlights of the day was Sheena Boughden’s inspirational keynote talk on the development of the Four Winds Festival – a music festival held every second Easter in Bermagui that Sheena and her team have built up to be a hugely successful enterprise.

The Clyde River and Batemans Bay Historical Society put on some of the best catering we have ever seen, and understandably received a spontaneous round of applause from the delegates!

Thanks to our partner South East Arts and Andrew Gray, all our amazing speakers and the team at the Old Courthouse Museum.

M&G NSW has some helpful resources on grant writing and project management. And don't forget our excellent resource the 2012 Grants and Funding Guide!

Next week we should have several of the talks available through our website and Alert!

M&G embarks on RAP adventure

M&G fearlessly hoping onto the Mari Nawi.
Image courtesy of Andrew Brettell.

A two hour cruise including a course on living on only natural resources might sound like a pilot for a cross-over Survivor/Gilligan’s Island television show. It was instead how M&G NSW staff began their Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) adventure. 

Bravery and faith were required but more of the kind needed to face the unpredictable weather havoc of our la nina summer. With water, water everywhere, thanks to last Thursday’s extreme downpour, our fate was in the hands of the experienced Aboriginal mariners of the Tribal Warrior Association. 

Tribal Warrior is the not-for-profit, Redfern-based organization run by Aboriginal Elders. Since starting up in 1998, it has trained more than 700 Aboriginal mariners, many of them from remote and extremely disadvantaged backgrounds. 

The weather meant some last-minute changes to our program. Walking through the Royal Botanic Gardens and its Cadi Jam Ora: First Encounters interpretive display to our docking point was no longer on the agenda. The mob at Tribal Warrior however, held firm that the cruise would go ahead. Sure enough, by the time we disembarked at Clark Island, the sun had come out to welcome us.

Les Daniels gave us the island tour which is easy as it is less than a hectare in size. The fascinating part was in the detail, the commonplace features of the landscape that revealed so much about truly living from the land. We saw the natural rockpools and how they had been adapted as fishtraps: high tide comes in bringing the abundance of the harbor with it and then drains to leave a fish platter. We also inspected the natural aquafier on the island and learnt of the multiple uses of different native plant species found even on this small patch. 

Terry Olsen and M&G demonstrating the emu stance.
Image courtesy of Lorna Munro. 

Terry Olsen then demonstrated some of the many Aboriginal dances of eastern Australia before getting the team up to learn the emu dance. It was great fun and no one was hurt, not even a peck.

Back on board the Mari Nawi, Corey Grech who established bush foods eatery Purple Goanna in Redfern with sister Suzanne, was busy barbecuing up some tasty morsels of kangaroo and seafood with salad for our trip back. Corey is branching out with Kool Purple Kookas, teaching young people to cook healthy bush tucker in a fun way. There were many interesting conversations on the return trip including with Lorna Munro who earlier in the day had given us a presentation on the Aboriginal connections to the Woolloomooloo area and beyond. As living culture, some of these connections are still practiced today but probably invisible to the non-Aboriginal population. The natural landscape, the escarpments and the bays, also reveal land use patterns, including men’s business and women’s business, places where tools were ground and others where ceremonies took place. As an educator, Aboriginal history and politics are natural to Lorna whose bloodlines on both sides mean that such conversations were an everyday occurrence for her growing up. 

 M&G's Steve Miller, Corey Grech and Terry Olsen on the harbour.
Image courtesy of Andrew Brettell. 

The M&G NSW team were enthusiastic about this introduction to Aboriginal culture here in the centre of Sydney. Sydney Harbour after all is one of the most significant outdoor galleries in the world for rock art. As I’ve seen before, it helps to understand the layers and interactions of widely different cultures that have contributed to an area’s development. It adds meaning to a sense of place as something more than where you work or live.
Information on how to develop a RAP can be found on the Reconciliation Australia website.

The Standards Program kicks off for another year

The finale of our road trip around the long paddock was a workshop in Wagga Wagga on Friday, introducing new participants to the 2012 Standards Program. Held at the Old Council Chambers at the Museum of the Riverina, it was a day to meet everyone who we will be working with this year, and let them know exactly what they have got themselves in for!

Ten museums from the Eastern Riverina have signed up for the program of self and peer review this year, and the program is definitely off to an excellent start. Each museum had a chance to share with the group a bit about their museums, and it was great to hear what a diverse range we have on board.

We were lucky to hear from Myfanwy Thompson, who kindly joined us from the Old Courthouse Museum in Batemans Bay. Her museum completed the Standards program last year and successfully made it through in one piece! It was reassuring to hear of their museum’s experiences in going through the program and everyone really appreciated her lively and encouraging presentation.

We are looking forward to the next get together in August, in the meantime we know everyone will be very busy getting stuck into the program activities!

Thanks heaps to the staff at the Museum of the Riverina for all their help in running the workshop and making it such a successful day.

Catching up with Mark Lipscomb and David Mathieson from Adelong Alive Museum.

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The team from Tumut Historical Society and Sandra West from the Up to Date Store with Rachael Vincent, Regional Museum Officer.

Journeys on the Long Paddock

Phoebe and I are currently traveling in the western Riverina and Murray regions of NSW, talking to councils and museums about the Standards program we're planning to run in the area in 2013.

After a delayed flight we arrived in Griffith on Tuesday morning and popped in to the Griffith Pioneer Park Museum where we met with Manager Darryl Collins and Councillor Pat Cox. The Pioneer Park is home to an incredible variety of heritage buildings that have been moved to the site from the surrounding district, including a one room school, small temporary buildings made from scrap materials and covered in canvas bagging from Bagtown (the construction camp for the early 20th century irrigation scheme), a police lockup and a pub.

The Pioneer Park is also home to the Italian Museum. Strongly supported by the local Italian community, the Italian museum celebrates Griffith's large and diverse Italian community, their contribution to the wine industry and the vibrancy of Griffith. We were also privileged to have a sneak peek at the newest display area in the Pioneer Park- a new building dedicated to telling the story of the local wineries. It was great to hear that the building has been strongly supported both financially and through the donation of collection items by the wineries themselves.

The Pioneer Park is clearly a community hub, as we wandered through the grounds, children from the play group that meets there on weekdays were scooting around, the local craft group meets in one of the heritage buildings on a weekly basis as does the local arts society. Darryl also showed us plans for a new entrance building with a small conference facility that he hopes will enable even more community groups to use the Pioneer Park.

After a lovely lunch of sandwiches and cake (with extra supplies gratefully packed for the road) we headed off to Hay where we met with General Manager Allen Dwyer and Corporate Services Director Mark Dowling. Mark is also a volunteer at the Hay Gaol Museum and on the board of Shear Outback so was able to give insight into these museums from both Council's and the Museums' perspective. It was great to meet someone so senior in a council so engaged with the local museum community.



We called in briefly to Shear Outback before heading to Deniliquin. Shear Outback celebrates the significant contribution shearers have made to regional Australia with exhibitions about the history of shearing, interactives that give visitors a sense of the energy used in shearing and video oral histories and images about shearing life. Adjacent to the museum building is a heritage shearing shed where a local shearer provides shearing demonstrations for visitors.

 Leaving Hay we headed south on the Cobb Highway to Deniliquin, the highway is part of the Long Paddock, a droving route used to move livestock from Queensland through NSW to Victoria. Along the route are a series of interpretive panels and artworks highlighting local stories and sites. We were particularly taken with the story of the headless horseman depicted in a series and large cutout metal figures silloueted against the horizon like giant shadow puppets. As the car's airconditiong had stopped working just out of Griffith, we experienced the full brunt of the day's heat and were delighted to arrive in Deniliquin and gaze upon the tree lined river.

An Opportunity to Rethink my Museum

Samantha Sinnayah, 2011 M&G NSW Mentorship Recipient  
Western Plains Cultural Centre (WPCC), National Museum of Australia (NMA) and surrounding regional museums.

As I work alone at the George Hanna Memorial Museum (GHMM), and have done for the past two years, I was seeking to expand and refresh my curatorial practice. Now in its 16th year, the GHMM is running out of traditional historical topics to cover and will need to rethink approaches if meaningful exhibitions are to be developed in the future.

With this goal in mind, I applied for an M&G NSW Mentorship, funded by Arts NSW, at the Western Plains Cultural Centre (WPCC) and the National Museum of Australia (NMA).

At the WPPC I was very interested to see how this local government museum managed to continually engage its community with new perspectives on Dubbo’s history through exhibitions like People Places Possessions: Dubbo Stories, and Dubbo 10- Community Voices. Likewise, I’d hoped that my time at NMA would provide me with ideas on how to approach my future exhibition proposal, a social history of Botany Bay, from Captain Cook to the present day. Covering four local government areas, this will be a larger project than any I have previously researched and curated.

My placement exposed me to the different approaches, issues and responsibilities these institutions faced. One highlight was witnessing collection and curatorial meetings at NMA. As a curator of a museum that focuses on one small local government area, I assumed the NMA just had a wider area over which to cast its net. I had no idea how complex collecting for a nation is and of the issues that come with that responsibility.

I also discovered the importance of making history relevant in collection and curatorial practice. NMA actively collect the ‘past’ as it occurs in the present, and, during a trip to Wagga, I found that staff at the ,Museum of the Riverina also link their historical exhibitions to the here and now. At the GHMM, our exhibitions are tied to celebrating the past, partly due to our strong ties to our local historical trust. Linking the past to the present is certainly something I am going to consciously consider in the future, especially as I attempt to build new audiences.

During the two weeks, I also took the opportunity to visit a number of regional museums between Dubbo and Albury. Having the chance to see a wide cross section of museums in NSW gave me a strong sense of the sector as a whole and my organization’s place in it. On a basic level, it introduced me to the depth of collections across the state and the resourcefulness of some volunteer run organizations. On a deeper level, it is has made me think more strategically about the resources I have available to me. The volunteer run Cootamundra Heritage Centre was very inspirational and has opened my eyes to how I may be able to utilize our local historical trust. 

All in all my mentorship was an invaluable experience. Thanks to the frank conversations I had with museum professionals, and to the wide variety of exhibitions I saw, I gained far more from my mentorship than can be expressed in these condensed paragraphs.

Samantha Sinnayah
 

Volunteer Rusty in front of Cootamundra’s curiosity chest – the volunteer organization’s inexpensive but effective equivalent of the glass and steel chests at the Museum of Sydney.

A 3-d collage about the history of Cootamundra. These dioramas where produced in cigarette tins by Jack Mullins the local newsagent.

Congratulations to South East Museums!

The Standards Program journey has finally come to an end for eleven museums in the South East region who participated in our 2011 program.

Yesterday Michael, Andrew, Sarah-Jane and I joined South East Arts, local council and other supporters of the museums in Cooma to congratulate the participants on their great achievement. Everyone put in so many volunteer hours and hard work to improve their museums and, despite some very challenging moments, persevered to the finishing line!

Before the celebrations began, each museum had a chance to talk to the group about their experiences in taking on the program. Everyone described significant challenges but also rewarding experiences.

Some of the great feedback we got included ‘the Standards Program got us to focus on what we have as well as what’s missing’; ‘participating in the program brought us together so we know each other’, and ‘we found the independent view and positive feedback about our displays and museum valuable.’ 

Part of the Standards Program includes on site reviews of each participant by Standards Reviewers. It was clear that all the museums appreciated the huge amount of advice and assistance from the reviewers.

Congratulations to everyone who participated, and thank you for being such a great group to work with! Thanks also to Andrew at South East Arts for all the support and helping us make it happen in the South East.

Happy (and relieved) participants of the Standards Program 2011 

Platform to Heritage- Accessible Arts in Heritage Sites

On Monday 28 November, M&G NSW co-hosted an event with Accessible Arts exploring the requirements and challenges facing audiences and arts professionals with disabilities in heritage buildings. We were fortunate enough to have a range of speakers including disability specialists, architects and people working in heritage buildings operating as museums and galleries. A number of powerpoint presentations from the day have been uploaded to our website and are available through M&G NSW Resources. Speakers included:

Vince Sicari, Heritage Branch NSW, Office of Environment and Heritage

Vince is the Manager of the Conservation Team at the Heritage Branch and gave a great outline of how a building gets to be heritage listed, the implications of listing, the use of interim heritage orders, the relationship between the Heritage Branch and its guiding body, the Heritage Council and the sort of advice that the Heritage Branch can provide, through its Fire, Access and Services Advisory Panel (FSAP) Vince also mentioned two documents the Heritage Branch have produced New Uses for Heritage Places (which outlines the process of adapting a heritage building for a new use, including access for people with disabilities) and Design in Context (which outlines the process of building new structures within a heritage precinct).

Eric Martin, Eric Martin & Associates- Architects

Eric is an architect with over 35 years experience developing heritage buildings for disability access.  Eric provided an outline of the various pieces of legislation that impact on the provision of disability access to heritage buildings.  In particular the

Disability (Access to Premises - Buildings) Standards 2010 which came into effect in May 2011. Eric also mentioned the newly formed NSW Building Professionals Board's newly formed Access Advisory Committee, who are able to provide advice related to the Disability Standards including decisions about unjustifiable hardship.  Eric outlined the steps undertaken in planning for disability access to heritage buildings as follows:

1. Review the significance of the place and identify the elements of greatest significance
2. Undertake an Access Audit to determine existing and required levels of accessibility.
3. Evaluate access options within a conservation context. This process includes consultation with authorities and approval of the proposed action.
4. Prepare the access policy or action plan.
5. Implement the necessary action.

 From Eric's perspective, the key areas to consider include:

• •Parking 
• Access to building entry 
• Access through public entrances 
• Circulation throughout the main building 
• Access to other floors 
• Egress 
• Toilets 
• Other facilities
• Information

Eric's website includes a great series of images showing approaches not only to providing physical access to building but also ideas for improving access for people with visual impairment that can improve their enjoyment of heritage spaces.  The website also includes a series of publications related to access to buildings including Improving Access to Heritage Buildngs.

Mark Relf, Accessibility Solutions  

Mark runs a consultancy focusing on disability access.  Mark outlined mobility issues including: Lower reach ranges, lower viewing/sight lines, accessible amenities and steps.  He spoke of the need for ramps, lifts and also appropriate handrails.  Mark also highlighted approaches to improve access for people with vision and hearing impairment including: the use of tactile surfaces, Braille/raised print, large format labels/guides, audio description, increased general light levels, assistive listening systems (such as hearing loops), Auslan interpreters, captioning and printed material.

Mark encouraged people to consider not just access to the building but the entire visitor experience including  booking a ticket, finding out information prior to a visit, signage about access for people with disabilities,  where to park/drop people off, availability of seating/rest points, sightlines (which will be lower for people in wheelchairs), access to interactive exhibitions, the location of accessible toilets and staff/volunteer awareness. 

Mark pointed out that the low light levels in exhibitions can make it very difficult for people with vision impairment to find their way around and suggested that higher general lighting or lights with timers could help with this.  Similarly he suggested that strip lights on stairs could be of assistance.  He also pointed out that exhibition furniture hanging from the ceiling or sticking out into pathways could also be a hazard, as well as temporary barriers in the form of cables, ropes or retractable belts.  Mark provided links to some recent papers from the USA's National Center on Accessibility who have recently written papers on the museum experiences of people who are blind and vision impaired including

Exhibit Design Relating to Low Vision and Blindness: 

Current Media Technology, Appropriate Application of Technology, Future Research Needs 

What Visitors with Vision Loss Want Museums and Parks to Know about Effective Communication

Research on Effective Use of Tactile Exhibits with Touch Activated Audio Description for the Blind and Low Vision Audience

Tactile Mapping for Cultural and Entertainment Venues

The afternoon gave us an opportunity to hear from a range of people working in heritage buildings, mostly being used as museums and galleries which led to some really interesting discussions between the speakers and audience. Speakers explored approaches to improving access into buildings, virtual tours to fragile sites and approaches to improved access for people with vision and hearing impairment as well as the Deaf community. Speakers included:

Mantej Singh Head of Western Sydney Portfolio, Historic Houses Trust of NSW
As Head of the Western Sydney Portfolio, Mantej is responsible for a range of properties including Rouse Hill, Elizabeth Farm and Meroogal. Historic Houses can be difficult to provide access into as many are being interpreted in the manner of their original use, (including homes, small shops and a farm) which provides challenges, in particular with upper floors. Rouse Hill is a point in case where the fragile nature of the upper floors prevents any visitor access. Instead, the Historic Houses Trust has developed a virtual tour which not only provides panoramic views of each room in the property but allows visitors to open drawers, cupboards etc. to explore contents that wouldn't be accessible to anyone on an actual tour. The full virtual tour is available on terminals at the Rouse Hill Visitors Centre and Caroline Simpson Library (at the Mint, Macquarie St). Five of the panoramas are available for viewing on the HHT's website.

Julie McKenzie, Associate Director, Tonkin Zulaika Greer Architects
As an architect, Julie has worked closely on the redevelopment of a number of heritage sites for arts purposes including museums, galleries and performing arts. Julie has worked with Mark Relf on a number of projects and spoke of the importance of seeing the potential of a site in a design sense and consulting widely to ensure good access. She spoke specifically about three projects that she has been involved in- Carriageworks the train workshops in Eveleigh that have been redeveloped into a dynamic performing arts venue; Casula Powerhouse in western Sydney, an old powerstation that has been redeveloped into a dynamic gallery and performing arts venue in several stages over a ten year period and the Paddington Reservoir which was being used as a carpark prior to being converted into a sunken public garden.

Joe Eisenberg, Cultural Director, Maitland Regional Art Gallery
Joe outlined the work involved in redeveloping an early twentieth century technical college into a twenty first century art gallery. As with Casula Powerhouse, the redevelopment of Maitland Regional Art Gallery was undertaken in stages and has included the introduction of a new building to link two existing buildings (and in doing so avoiding the use of steps between spaces), the installation of a lift to the upper level, inclusion of accessible toilets and a sensory garden. A ramp was included at the new entrance to the building, Joe reflected on the fact that most people use the entrance at the other side, which comes straight in from the carpark. He pointed out that this in many ways has become the main entrance to the building as more people arrive by car than other modes of transport.

Julie Baird, Deputy Director, Newcastle Museum
Julie pointed out that not all heritage buildings are created equal, particularly in terms of access. The museum had been located in a heritage listed brewery on seven levels, with a lift that could only fit one wheelchair. The Newcastle Museum reopened in August this year at a more accessible heritage site, a railways workshop beside Newcastle's Civic railway station. As the building was originally designed to move train carriages through it, it has large entrances, with most operations on a single level, which is in terms of access and the movement of collections around the site. There is no fixed furniture in the cafe or theatrette which allows both to be arranged according to visitor needs and the activities being undertaken. The museum inherited a number of chairs from council which have been placed throughout the public spaces (including the accessible toilet) as the need for rest spots had been identified during the museum's redevelopment.

Newcastle Museum Volunteer, Di Taylor, who uses a wheelchair, has been providing feedback to Museum staff about accessibility issues as they arise, particularly in terms of exhibitions where a couple of showcases had been set too high. Julie acknowledges that there are some accessibility issues that haven't been overcome, such as the need for collections in some spaces to be at least 1m from the ground in case of flood and the fact that the tram which visitors are invited to climb in and explore is not accessible for those with a physical disability.
The Museum's motivation to continue to improve access for all people into around the site is reflected int their recent work with Vision Australia. Following the arrival of temporary exhibition Living in a sensory world: stories from people with blindness and low vision the Museum has been collaborating with the Newcastle staff from Vision Australia to develop audio described tours and material that can be accessed through a DAISY reader (Digital Accessible Information System- an audio reader used by many people with vision impairment).

The seminar ended with a lively discussion between the audience and speakers about some of the challenges encountered when using heritage buildings as museums and galleries.