Museum Week 2011: Theme: "Museums and Memory"

Museums and Memory

This year’s International Museum Day , held on May 18, 2011 has the theme of “Museum and Memory”

Museums Australia (WA) plans to celebrate this day within our traditional “Museum Week” promotion and encourages all museums, keeping places and galleries to join with us.   Our Museum Week will begin on Monday 16 May and will continue through to Sunday 22 May.

Museums Australia is planning to provide the following generic promotional opportunities

Publicity
* A relationship is established with 720 and /or another metropolitan radio station, broadcasting activities each day
* Activities for each regional area sent to relevant radio stations, print media and television stations
* Media releases sent to metropolitan newspapers and templates for media releases sent to participating museums
* A dedicated Museum Week page added to www.museumswa.com.au website advertising Museums Week activities
Ideas to develop for Public Programs in your Museum
1. Town residents could write about their early memories of the town/or themes adopted by their museum egWubinWheatbin: residents write about early wheat farming days.  This could be centred around a display of photographs/artefacts which stimulate the memory.  If writing is daunting, the project could involve school children recording and /or transcribing the stories and anecdotes that come from this activity (perhaps even digital storytelling)
2. Provenance: children investigate the origins of their town: perhaps an extension of the East Perth cemetery project where school children ‘adopt” a pioneer’s grave in the local cemetery, are charged with the care of that grave and encouraged to trace the story of the person buried there.
3. Residents of aged care facilities invited to come to the museum and using the furniture, equipment etc, asked to recall the early days, hopefully this will stimulate them and give you some valuable insights into the themes of your museum
4. Museums have an open “Memory Day” when a significant time/period is chosen and all activities, food, music, games, stories, artefacts, photographs associated with that significant day/time/period are displayed and all citizens of the region invited to participate.  Again recollections/experiences are recorded in some way and displayed appropriately for the rest of the year
5. Prepare a display of copies of old photographs from the local community and invite the community to come to the museum to either identify local landmarks, businesses or early settlers.  You could also ask people to bring in their old photographs and ask permission to scan these to add to your collection (ensure that you have filled out the appropriate documentation).  This could be a task that upper primary school or secondary school children could assist with
6. Conservation workshops around looking after your tangible memorabilia eg generic care of photographs/ceramics, paper documents etc
7. Watch a conservator at work- if an object in your museum needs some work, with the conservator’s permission invite a small audience to watch and perhaps even help with non-specialised tasks
8. Sharing: have an afternoon/morning tea/social function wherein people are asked to bring in their artefacts related to the history of the town/region /area.

An Education Kit/Program developed to use with primary school age children expanding on the theme.  This can be emailed or posted to you on request (see registration form).  The kit is free to members and will cost $10 for non-members

Resources
Things provided by ICOM (for more information, please visit:http://network.icom.museum/imd2011.html
* A poster that can be downloaded from the website and customized
* A calendar of activities., press releases and news about IMD will be published
* Advertisements for events can be posted on the IMD website
* IMD 2011 communications kit and visuals can be downloaded
* Exclusive information will be made available to the press

This website also provides further examples of activities and ideas that you can implement to entice people to visit your museum.

Further Resources

The website below is linked to an exhibition on “Memory” that was completed over 10 years ago, but there is a lot of reading and ideas to stimulate your visitors
http://www.exploratorium.edu/memory/links.html

A website looking at “Memory Maps” http://www.vam.ac.uk/activ_events/adult_resources/memory_maps/

Article about “Memory Boxes”
http://www.museumsincornwall.org.uk/memory-boxes

A project that involves memory and art
http://www.thememoryproject.com/News---Events/CurrentNewsEvents/-i-The-Memory-Project--i--and-Kelowna-Museum-Socie.aspx

To register and be a part of Museum Week, please click on the link below

Registration%20Form%20Museum%20Week.docx