Meet the Museum: Behind Learning & Engagement

Speaker 1: Welcome, everyone. Thank you for coming tonight. As Arlene said, first of all, sorry, that's a, I should warn you about the bright light that comes up. Yeah. I would like to acknowledge that we are meeting and learning today on the lands of the Whadjuk Nyoongar people, and I pay my respects to elders, past and present. Here at the museum in particular, we are very thankful for the relationship we have with, in particular, Whadjuk Nyoongar people, but also other Aboriginal people as well, and they have been very generous in sharing their knowledge, their stories and the name of the museum, Boola Bardip, many, many stories. The focus is that people are telling stories from their own point of view, so we've really been very fortunate in, in having that ability to have beautiful relationships and, and share and have permission to share, some of the, the knowledge of the first scientists I like to think. I have a science background so I will be probably a bit science heavy tonight, sorry.

So my background is originally I did a chemistry degree and I worked as a chemist in the mining industry. I had an epiphany. What am I doing with my life moment? I then decided to go to Japan, and I lived in Japan for three years teaching English. From there I went, teaching is not so bad, even though all my teachers had said, don't be a teacher. So I came back, did my education qualification, and, taught, well, originally I had planned to teach high school science, but my first two postings were in district highs in the country. So I was teaching K to 10, K to Year 10, sorry, kindergarten to Year 10, science and maths, a bit of IT, a bit of home ec, you know, everything you do when you're a country teacher. So, then I came back to the city, taught in a high school in the northern suburbs for a little while and then joined an organization called Earth Science WA, and was presenting earth science incursions at schools. And so I became a real rock nerd, and volcanoes are one of my things that I love, as well as fossils. So get me started on fossils and you won't be leaving here on time. But, yeah, thank you for coming along. And I'd like to introduce, first of all, a bit of what our department within the museum called Learning and Engagement does. So learning is part of it obviously, we believe learning is not just for students and not just in the classroom kind of setting. Learning is for everyone that is visiting the museum, and we have various ways that we do that. And engagement obviously, is making sure that it's actually something interesting that people want to come and see, or come and engage with as well.

So I am going to go through a little bit, of, of who we are, what we do, why we do it, and how we do it. And it's a, probably a flying journey through all of this, but if you do have any questions, yeah, happy to answer them as well. So yeah, as it says, we have a broad range of experience within our, our department. So we have educators who have come from other primary, secondary, early childhood teaching backgrounds. We also have program presenters who have worked in very similar environments to myself with, not for profit organizations and Water Corp and, Kings Park and all sorts of other organizations as well in educational roles. And also creative producers. So we have a lot of events, and partnerships with communities as well that we, well, I will go into in a little bit more detail, so we have a couple of creative producers within our department as well. And more and more, there's, you know, a lot of crossover between those areas as well. And then we have a casual pool of deliverers who also have very varied backgrounds. And then our lovely volunteers, we couldn't do what we do without our volunteers. And sometimes some of our programs are even prompted by the conversations we have and the skill set of our volunteers as well.

So the what we do, I'm going to get into that, and sort of broken it into some different areas. Why we do it? Because we love it. We're passionate about what we're doing, and it's a really important part of a modern museum. We're very conscious of trying to change that, that stereotype of a museum being a repository of old stuff. These modern museums are so much more than that. And yet, we hope by you being here tonight, that's, that's a sign that you're not just thinking that as well. So please spread the word. And how we do it? We do it, various ways, is the easiest way. And I'll go into that as we go through. Okay, so at the moment, we have 34 education programs which are offered to schools. So they are ones where the schools will come to us. We will run facilitated sessions in the learning studios like this and have some components that go out into the galleries as well. We also offer some online sessions as well for schools that can't make it here. Yeah, we have, yeah, a broad range. If you're interested in the education programs, we do have some brochures. I'm doing a bit of a sell, so, yeah, you're welcome to grab one of those and have a look through what we do. It actually has the other museums listed in there as well. When I say, sorry, other museums, obviously WA Museum Boola Bardip is this site. We have Maritime, we have Shipwrecks. There's also regional museums in Kalgoorlie, Carnarvon, Geraldton and Great Southern, Albany. Yes, thank you, I always usually miss one. So, yeah, we also have a range of professional learning opportunities for teachers, so teaching teachers and giving them the opportunity to come and improve their skills and their knowledge without a group of students following behind them, so as not as part of an excursion, which is usually a great opportunity.

And then our public programing, so we have live art, we have talks like you're here tonight for, and various other events across a broad range of ages that we try and appeal to. So I am going to go through a bit of a pictorial journey. So our schools program, as I said, it can be things like our facilitated programs, which are shown on, on the right there, there's just a couple of examples. So we range from, yeah, paleontology kind of ones through to robotics. A lot of Aboriginal knowledge and culture as well, and they probably some of our most popular programs, so trying to cover as many different curriculum areas as possible, which is feasible, tying into museum objects and museum knowledge as well. Phys Ed we probably don't cover too much. But yeah, in terms of Science, HASS, English comes in across them all through literacy, same with maths we try and do some numeracy activities as well. I've probably missed one of the subject areas which will come back to haunt me, but yes, we try and cover as many, a broader range of the curriculum as possible.

We also run some special events, to celebrate special weeks and, and celebration days. So one example is on the right here where we ran, a special sort of, day of rotating activities for design week. And design week is a very broad term, and we've, over the years had many different styles of activities. This particular one was a was a bit of a favorite of mine which Arlene came up with the idea, so I'll give her credit where credit's due, looking at some of the objects in the museum that perhaps people just walk past and don't engage with as much. So we put the challenge to the students to try and highlight that object and why people should be more interested in it than, and, yeah, because it might be a small, significant thing, insignificant thing sorry, in size but in importance and in the learning about it, it’s quite important. So looking at how the students could actually highlight that and how they would view it and what they wanted to know about it as well.

Cool. School holidays. School holidays, as we've been speaking with some of, some of the people here tonight, are coming up very soon. And we have a range of different ways that we engage with people for the school holidays. So we have what we call drop and leave programs, so either a half day or a full day where, it'll be a facilitated program for student, children between the ages of 8 to 12. So it might be some watercolor painting, with wildflowers. It might be an archeology program, animation, claymation, and all sorts of other, yeah, we do Minecraft, and Mario Kart is always very popular as well. So we have a range of activities on most days of the holidays. So those are paid programs. And then we have our free drop in zones, so somewhere in the museum, usually up on level three, there's a nice space we use up there, we'll have a range of free activities where people can just drop in, have a go, often like craft kind of activities, but obviously often on a theme as well. And every so often we have opportunities to have special visitors like, our lovely dinosaur who was here for the last holidays, who is actually, sorry to shatter the illusion, a puppet from, with person inside it, from Erth, who are an amazing puppeteer group, so we had public interactions. My, my job always surprises me, when I had to guide the dinosaur up the escalator, that was probably the highlight of my career. It was an interesting one. And full props to the puppeteers inside. They have limited visibility and they managed to step onto the moving escalator and get up there and then step off without even, yeah, they were amazing. So yeah, that was, very popular. Dinosaurs are always popular and I'm a big dinosaur fan anyway, so I will always lean into that.

Community partners is another really big part of, of what we do. So, and in the foyer where we met, previously there is our community showcase. So at the moment we have, Peruvian objects in there and that's a partnership with Peruvian, have I got that right? Guatemalan. Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry. That's a partnership we have with the Embassy of Guatemala. So that actually came about through one of our cleaning staff who is Guatemalan, and saying, hey, I have a contact and we can, you know, make it, make it work to get some objects and, and celebrate Guatemalan culture, which is a beautiful thing. Then we'll have things like, this was Netball WA, it was an anniversary, I can't remember what the anniversary was, I'm sorry. No, so we have, yeah, basically a small changeable showcase that is, can show, showcase a community event. If you saw the, the adverts, you would have seen me with some of the members of the band Voyager, who were our Eurovision almost winners, that was so close. So that was, yeah, we had their costumes in there for a couple of months as well, which was pretty cool. So it's a very varied, but it's a way for smaller community groups to engage with us and also, yeah, celebrate what they’re about and, get the word out about them as well. Also things, like craft, sorry, not craft, but wider community, so there was, a project called Reclaim the Void. We get involved with, local cultural groups, so, like the Chihuahua Society, and then also community partners such as musicians and, artists of other, other ways, so Rupert Guenther is, person that we have partnered with quite a bit as well. So that's just a snippet of, of the stuff that we do.

So Nyumbi is our weekly Aboriginal dance and cultural performance, which is something we're really, really proud of, so it happens every Saturday at 11 a.m. out in the City Room. And we have the beautiful Derek up the, the top there, who is the worst teller of jokes, but he'll still make you laugh, and, yeah, he’s usually the MC, and the performers who rotate through different groups, it's a really great opportunity for some of the young Aboriginal people to share their culture and celebrate it. So completely free event, so if you have, you know, you're interested, please come along and it's always a great thing if you have overseas visitors to bring them as well. And you know, the, the younger generation especially, you know, can share their culture in a really beautiful and proud way, so we're very, very proud to have that as part of our programing. And that's something that Learning and Engagement also looks after.

Museum Labs, quarterly events that we have, usually on a theme, so for example, we had Music Lab where we were making fruit and vegetable pianos using Makey Makey's, which was a bit of fun. Surprisingly, you can play music with a potato. We've also had, we also had, we’ve had Music Lab, Dino lab, dinosaurs are always popular, Games Lab where we had a lot of collaboration with some games developers, and local gaming industry as well, which was a really well attended event. And there's a fourth topic which has skipped my brain, I'm sorry, there is another one as well, I should know. Also things like Biggest Science Lab Ever to celebrate National Science Week, we have a public, drop-in event and a range of different partners that will bring in, so, for example, down the bottom Fisheries WA we've brought in, Perth Observatory we've partnered with, quite a few times as well, and various other groups who have a special set of skills that they love to share as well. Yeah, I think that Museum Labs is pretty much covered. Talks obviously, this talk series, Meet the Museum, as Arlene said, is a monthly series. We often have talks related to our special exhibitions as well. If we have the opportunity, especially for the curators or, in the case of Spinifex, we had some people who were associated with the Tjuntjuntjara people, if you're not sure what I'm talking about there, talk to me later, so that, that exhibition. And so we're, we've got a series of talks coming up for our Terracotta Warriors as well, so people who have cultural knowledge of something to do with China or Terracotta Warriors and things like that as well, so curated talks that are specifically about our exhibitions. And then we, we’re actually reviewing our talk series at the moment, but another one we had was In Conversation where we'd often have a topic and invite a panel of people in to, to have a talk.

So I was talking to some people before, and they were asking, you know, what sort of size audience do we usually get? This is probably about the average size that we get sometimes, but this particular talk at the top here was a Meet the Museum about the Night Parrot. And I never thought that there would be so many people interested in the Night Parrot, but we sold out, and I think we ended up with 280 people. And yeah, that was the first one that I had to organize, so it was be like, okay, cool. It was amazing, it was so interesting, and I never realized it was quite a controversial topic as well. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So yeah, we have a whole range of things, hopefully appealing to a whole range of different audiences.

Live arts as well. So, the beautiful Hackett Hall, which, as you might have seen, there's a big event going up in there tonight, is actually a beautiful venue for live music and, and live performance, so that's often booked and used for that. We have a monthly choir, where the, sort of, led singing, for want of a better word, and some, yeah, sort of anthems that people can engage with and sing. So, they tried something a little bit different last month and had choir-a-oke which I always find it very difficult to say, to say, but it was, rather than just one song being learned and sung, it was, yes, people's choice, so that was a bit of fun, so it sounds like we could probably going to repeat something like that. So keep an eye out if you're willing to come and belt your lungs out, I guess, yeah. So this is our goods lift, which is the largest lift in the southern hemisphere. So why not turn it into a performance space? So we have had a series of music events. And the way it works is that the performer is in the goods lift, and then on it will travel to different levels of the museum, and the audience will sort of, the audience move, the, I can't remember how it works, yeah, the audience moves and there's different performers end up being in the lift, so it's a bit of a different experience, yeah. And really lovely to showcase some local up and coming talent as well. So we often team with events, with bigger festival events like Fringe Festival and Perth Festival, to run events here as well.

Then there's late nights. So as part of our special exhibitions, our larger special exhibitions in particular, we have, on Friday nights we have a bar, which is, in the case of, our exhibition To the Moon it was inside the actual exhibition. Dinosaurs of Patagonia was as well. This next exhibition, unfortunately, the bar, well not unfortunately because it's still going to be great, there's just no room with the amount of objects in the Terracotta Warriors exhibition, that the bar is actually going to be outside. But it'll still be really great because along with the, you know, coming and having a drink with your friends, which is a lovely thing, there'll be some talks and other events, some cultural performances that go along with it as well. So, yeah, a bit of fun. A different way to see the exhibition in the evening, which is lovely. And that was from Alice in Wonderland so we actually had a lot of people would come dressed up as well, which was really fun, yeah.

Our teacher professional learning is part of our education programs as well. So we do it either for, individual schools can book in as a group, or we run public sessions where individual teachers from various schools can come along as well. We also have, for our special exhibitions, we try and do a teacher familiarization evening as well, and, trying something different with the Terracotta Warriors exhibition coming up, where we're actually teaming it up with our Friday night bar, understanding that teachers like a drink too and a bit of a socialization, so yeah, that's potentially a good way to, to capture their attention. So we have a range of different topics which relate to basically our programing as well.

And then early learners, still going, we have a weekly program called Little Learners which runs on Thursdays for under-fives. So under-fives can come and do some activities, sing some songs, have some, hear some stories. We also team up with Spare Parts Puppet Theatre and have some sessions of Puppet Playtime here, where they will read a story and have it acted out with some puppets and then have some activities around that as well. And then down in the bottom corner here, we also have baby playtime as well, so that's usually under threes. Yes. Sorry, we've got so much going on it's hard to get across it sometimes. But lots of fun activities for, for the younger learners as well who can come during the day when, you know, without school groups and things like that as well, so lots of fun.

And then if that's not enough, we also sometimes get off site and help out at events. So this was at a Youth Action Plan launch. We help out at the Whiteman Park Children's Ground, Gnangara Groundwater Festival, which is a bit of a mouthful, and assist by running some of the activities there. There was a big multicultural festival in the Perth Cultural Center that we had a stand with and some other special events around. So yeah, we try and get out, out and about a little bit as well with some of our activities.

And our volunteers. We couldn't, as I said before, couldn't do what we do without them. So this, I love this photo. It's just so joyous. And so, as alongside our larger puppet that we had, the professional puppeteering, some of our volunteers volunteered to be trained up as puppeteers with the baby dinosaurs as well. And they're just beautiful the way they could engage with, with people as well, so we have them in our education facilitated sessions. They often help out with those sessions, as well as our drop in holiday programs, and so, yeah, they're, they're an amazing group of people with a really broad skill set. And yeah, we're, we're finding that we, we really can't do what we do without them as well. They've done things like dressing up as aliens for the After Dark Bar, for the To the Moon, through to, we've got one of them at the moment making a whole lot of terracotta warriors from plaster and yeah, broad, broad range of experience and they're just so keen to jump in. So yeah, we, we, we love them.

All right. I think we can have questions now and then go on to activities do you think, or do you want to, yeah, so I apologize, I always talk a million miles a minute so please do ask questions if you would like to know any more about any of the stuff that we do or anything that you might know about that we haven't covered there, because there's a lot.

Speaker 2: And sitting there reviewing all of that I was going, my goodness, we do do a lot.

Speaker 1: I'm exhausted, yeah.

Speaker 2: Are there any questions? Can I get you to say the question into the microphone?

Audience member 1: How do you advertise it all because as a homeschool mum I struggle with the website, navigating it and I can never find the right program.

Speaker 1: Yes, there is a lot on the website because of how many programs and things we do. So we do have, in terms of the education stuff, is that what you particularly interested in? Yes, so we have what we call a EDM, electronic direct mail, I think is what it stands for, so you can sign up for that and I will show you on the website where you can do that, because unfortunately, it is through the website that you do that. Absolutely. Yeah, I totally agree. So the other thing we do, we write the web pages for all of our programs as well so that's another skill set that we have.

Audience member 1: I need to find something in Geraldton on Ancient Egypt. (inaudible question)

Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah. Right I know it's true. That's amazing, that's dedication I love that. Yeah. We do have an Egyptian Meet the Museum coming up. Yes. Yes. So yeah that would be the first port of call. And I would say, yeah, the website and I can give you a few little tips about how to search a little bit easier on the website as well. Yeah for sure. It is a big website and there is a lot going on there, yeah. Any other questions?

Audience member 2: I'm really interested in using video games for science engagement so I would love if you could talk any more about this, there is a couple of events you mentioned.

Speaker 1: Yes, so we've had Games Lab, this particular one was only a few months ago, and it was one of our most popular ever. So we managed to team up with a lot of games developers and things like that as well, so it was a matter of contacting people and having contacts, which is often easy, not that easy. So when we go out looking, we kind of start with a, you know, good old Google search and try and find people, but also looking at, gamification in particular I know is a big thing, so look for the institutions and organizations that are teaching it as well. So there's SAE which you may know about and even some of the universities are doing some game design courses as well. And just I guess, yeah, it's a tricky one, but having the networks and just trying to network with those kind of people, I said that sounds terrible, it makes me sound like, like you know, those kind of people. I don't mean it in that way at all, but people who are interested in that field and making a few contacts there and just asking them if they know someone who knows something about this and, and word of mouth is, is the easiest way. Yeah. I'm not sure if that's helpful, I'm sorry. Yeah.

Cool. Any other questions at all? No, we're keen to get started on our activities.

Speaker 2: More smiles a than a panicked look!

Speaker 1: That's a good sign.

Speaker 2: Well, let's do a thank you now.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, I think we'll stop there everybody.

Speaker 2: Thank you Cecily for that very informative,

Speaker 1: Pleasure.

Speaker 2: exhausting list of things that we do.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. Thank you very much.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the talks archive brought to you by the Western Australian Museum Boola Bardip. To listen to other episodes, go to visit.museum.wa.gov.au/episodes/conversations where you can hear a range of talks and conversations. The talks archive is recorded on Whadjuk Nyoongar boodja. The Western Australian Museum acknowledges and respects the traditional owners of their ancestral lands, waters and skies.