Regional & Public Galleries NSW 2011 Conference

Currency: Resourcefulness, Relevance, Resilience  

30 October - 1 November 2011

Registrations are now open for Regional & Public Galleries NSW (RPG NSW) 2011 Conference which this year will be held at the Glasshouse Arts, Conference and Entertainment Centre in Port Macquarie. This year the conference is themed Currency: Resourcefulness, Relevance, Resilience.

This conference will investigate issues of sustainability for the sector from a triple bottom line perspective, exploring the three pillars of the environmental, financial and social. The program will cover sustainable practice across the range of gallery and museum operations and the conference will be a valuable professional development opportunity for directors, public programs and marketing staff, as well as gallery technicians with an involvement in facility maintenance. Through facilitated discussion and practical workshops, by the end of the conference we aim to have developed a list of strategies, both short and long term, with which to move forward to support the vitality and longevity of the sector.  

Featured speakers include:

• Lucy Neal, UK, co-author of Sustainable Ability report and contributor to The Happy Museum Project.
• Jason Smith, Director at the Heide Museum of Modern Art on sustainable practices at Heide
• Emrah Baki Ulason will present the findings of the recent Lighting and Energy Effectiveness Report carried out by Steensen Varming
• Krista Huebner from The Museum of Contemporary Art on their use of social media and models for audience engagement

• Elizabeth Mead from the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) about audience development strategies and their use of new technology

• Belinda Hanrahan from Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre on sponsorships as strategic partnership
• Jenny Fraser, artist and founder of cyberTribe on Indigenous art online

• Dr Usha-Iyer Raniga, Snr Lecturer, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University on building green facilities
• Lis Bastian, formerly of Central NSW Councils (Centroc) and currently Director at Varuna, the Writers’ House, will faciliate an important practical discussion with all the delegates around the issues covered
• Further speakers to be announced

The conference will begin with a welcome drinks, registration and performances at 5.30pm-7.30pm on Sunday 30 October at Glasshouse Regional Gallery.

Download the conference program

Download a registration form

Accommodation
The Observatory is offering a special rate to RPG NSW conference delegates on stays more than two nights. You can visit their website here.
 
Call for Papers
Submissions are now open for papers from RPG NSW members for a session that will look at models for audience engagement.

Download a paper proposal form

Conference Details
When: from 5.30pm Sunday 30 October – 1 November 2011
Where: Glasshouse Arts, Conference and Entertainment Centre, 32 Clarence Street, Port Macquarie, NSW
Conference fees: $270 full price / $220 concession (plus $65 optional conference dinner)
Special offer: concession rate available to organisations that book 2 or more additional staff members
Further information: contact Cassie Charlton pdc@mgnsw.org.au or ph: (02) 9339 99914


Museums & Galleries NSW is presenting this conference in partnership with Regional & Public Galleries NSW (RPG NSW).

Regional museums in an online future

Getting it into the ether

We distributed draft information sheets on some of the essentials — developing web- sites with little money, social media, systems, standards and other topics. Ingrid Mason, from the Collections Australia Network, and Joy Suliman, from the Powerhouse Museum‘s ThinkSpace, led us through some of the fundamentals of creating sites and using social media. The branch will be using the sheets and suggestions at the conference, among other sources, in developing printed and online publications and as touchstones for future workshops.

To get a better understanding of online approaches by museums in New South Wales, we invited a few colleagues to talk to us about their experiences.

Maree Clutterbuck, Collections Manager, Sydney University Museums, outlined the development of a more integrated approach to managing cataloguing records in the 3 public museums and 50 smaller department museums at the oldest university in Australia (www.usyd.edu.au/museums/). The museums purchased KE EMu in 2006 to replace a number of separate systems. Cataloguing policy questions revolved around the fact that the museums primarily serve university staff and students rather than the general public. Opening access to some materials called for circumspection. These questions and data migration issues have now been resolved and the catalogue is expected to be available on the museums‘ website soon.

Geoff Barker has been working on a total asset management (TAM) project at the Powerhouse Museum (www.powerhouse museum.com). The museum has an international reputation for innovative use of technology. Its catalogue is a richly layered presentation of catalogue records and images of museum objects, comple- mented with links to user tags, related subjects, similar objects, auto-generated tags and sources such as Wikipedia, WorldCat records and the Library of Congress Authority File.

The TAM project is an externally funded project which is working on collections and objects whose current storage, age, and state of documentation is exposing them to risk. As well as addressing this primary objective, Geoff has been exploring options for improving the quality of data and enhancing the online experience. As better elements — significance state- ments, themes, images, tags and links — are generated, these are harvested automatically monthly from KE EMu database into the museum‘s server. This has significantly improved searching. It has also highlighted different practices of different depart- ments within the museum — such as the archive. This in turn may lead to breaking down some of the walls between them..

Other notable online strategies by the museum include use of Flickr to publish images and uploading content to other government projects—such as About New South Wales (about. nsw.gov.au/). Its Australian Dress Register (www.powerhouse museum.com/dressregister/) is expected to be launched as a public site this year. The museum's partner- ships on the Sydney Sidetracks web- site (www.abc.net.au/innovation/ sidetracks/) and the Dictionary of Sydney (www.dictionaryofsydney. org/) are indications of wider collaboration.

Read more . . .

Source: Museum Matters Vol 19 no 1 July 2010

Working Space 5 Bursaries Available

Museums & Galleries NSW (M&G NSW) is pleased to offer a number of bursaries for the “Working Spaces for Museum Volunteers” Conference, hosted by Museums Australia – Lachlan Chapter.  Funded through M&G NSW’s VIM Grant Program, these bursaries will contribute to registration, meals, accommodation and travel costs for the 3 day conference, to be held in Friday 14th to Sunday 16th October 2011.

The Conference aims to provide volunteers with “hands-on”practical experience in many areas of museum practise including assessing significance, the secrets of good graphic design, grant writing and exhibition display techniques.

For more information on the Conference and venue, or to receive a Registration Form please contact Bill Pigram, ph 02 6226 4894 or email apigram@ozemail.com.au

Applications for the “Working Spaces 5 for Museum Volunteers” bursaries close on Friday 5th August. To apply, follow the links to download bursary guidelines. Due to high demand, only one bursary per organisation is available.

For more information or an application form for the “Working Spaces 5” bursaries please contact Phoebe Arthur, Sector Development Coordinator, on 02 9339 9913 or email phoebea@mgnsw.org.au.

Source:  Museums & Galeries NSW - Alert!