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Grappling with the past - reflections from the AMaGA conference 2024

"Women's work is never done so a woman directors work is really never done" – Jahnavi Phalkey, Bengaluru Science Gallery

Museum of Fire CEO Belinda McMartin outside of The Goods Shed, Ballarat Victoria for the AMaGA Conference, 2024
Museum of Fire CEO Belinda McMartin outside of The Goods Shed, Ballarat Victoria for the AMaGA Conference, 2024

The Australian Museum and Galleries Association (AMaGA) national conference was held in Ballarat, Victoria recently with the central theme for 2024 promoted as “(un)common ground: collisions, convergence and conversations”.


As has become the norm, climate change and underrepresented voices were the topic that was woven through most sessions and conversations. These are things that we, at the Museum of Fire, are well aware are crucial to the future development of the museum, especially as we strive for a more inclusive experience of our presentation of the past


There is no getting away from it, the Museum of Fire is, and can come across as outdated to visitors. As this is something that we acknowledge about ourselves, over the last few years we have been striving to bring the museum out of the past and into the present, despite having limited funds with which to enact this change. For this reason, this is a slow and sometimes tedious process.


During a presentation about the reinvention of the Sovereign Hill precinct by Katrina Nitschke and Sara Quon they raised several topics that resonated with me in regard to our museum. The first was a switch in perspective from constantly hanging onto the catch cry that we are “not for profit” and instead look to becoming a “purpose-led” organisation. What does that mean though? Put simply, why should someone come and visit the museum? What experience will they be part of?

Sovereign Hill, Ballarat Victoria, 2024
Sovereign Hill, Ballarat Victoria, 2024

Cultural tourism has its own unique identity, with museums and art galleries tending to take up a considerable chunk of this space.  The Museum of Fire’s goal is not just to only share in the history of firefighting but also to deliver community fire safety messages, so we have strived to ensure that the experience we offer caters towards families, especially children. When we really shifted to this angle, we saw a marked rise in our visitation as we had now diversified our audience to be truly inclusive of the community, where in the past it had mainly looked towards a very narrow market where we were not receiving the amount of visitation that we had hoped.


Just because this works though, and helps to bring in revenue is it correct? Could we open the Museum to even more audiences by expanding our scope? Of course we could! Our heritage team are constantly sharing stories online as a way to absorb oneself in history and we do know that some visitation has been driven by this.

Ballarat Civic Hall, the primary location of the AMaGA conference, Ballarat Victoria, 2024
Ballarat Civic Hall, the primary location of the AMaGA conference, 2024

When reflecting on the reinvention of Sovereign Hill, another topic that was raised is the desire of the public to see themselves in the story being presented, even if this isn’t necessarily historically accurate. One way to drive visitation to an organisation is by ensuring the public understand why they need to visit. For many a visit to a museum can be a type of pilgrimage where they are visiting to connect to their personal history, especially if it is the history of family members from generations past.


This is very true for the Museum of Fire with firefighters of all generations, and even their families - generations later, attending the Museum to reminisce and reflect. What about those communities though who don’t have that personal association? Don’t they too have a right to be able to see themselves and their stories reflected in a museum which is open to the public? It is more likely that the people who visit us don’t have a personal connection to firefighting, so it does beg the question of how we can make them feel included in our spaces.

Art Gallery of Ballarat, 2024
Art Gallery of Ballarat, 2024

The key question is how can you present an authentic history whilst also enabling inclusion? For example, in the military reenactments at Sovereign Hill women haven’t generally been included because, after all there were no female Red Coat’s back in the day! How does modern society reconcile this? Many women may want to now participate, and can history be used as a reason for exclusion? In my opinion, of course not! Therefore, museums walk a fine line to interpret the historical record and present it to the public, balancing the needs for modern day inclusion/adaptation and being authentic to the historical narrative.


Over the next six months this theme will continue to develop and be represented within the exhibitions and projects being undertaken by our museum, so indeed, watch this space!

 

The future of museums is constantly evolving and to refer back to the quote I opened this blog with by Jahnavi Phalkey from the Bengaluru Science Gallery, our work as leaders of museums will never be done. To consider a museum “completed” means to park it in the realms of static history itself; and this of course is not the purpose of a museum.


CEO Belinda McMartin inside one of the talks at the AMaGA conference, 2024
CEO Belinda McMartin inside one of the talks at the AMaGA conference, 2024

I was disappointed to see so few young, emerging professionals from the sector in attendance at the conference and while many may put this down to the ‘cost of living’, I think organisations, especially leadership, have a responsibility to foster the growth and development of the next generation of museum professionals. This is something I have always believed in strongly, and I note that the few young people I did speak with tended to come from smaller institutions, such as ours, where this development is encouraged.


I’ll finish with another quote, this time from a session by Dr. Britt Romstad and Dr. Indigo Holcombe-James from ACMI when they discussed the exhibition “Goddess: Power, Glamour, rebellion”. As work on our exhibition celebrating the 40th anniversary of women in the NSWFB is underway for 2025, this comment made me pause:

 

“Men’s stories are universal while women’s stories are for women” (reflection from the visitor information obtained from the exhibition by the ACMI team).

 

-Blog by CEO Belinda McMartin

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