Museums and Education

I found this recent article on museums and education while checking out Museums Australia's new 'ning' and thought you might be interested.

Living in the Seventies

Costume worn by Greg Macainsh on Skyhooks 1976 American Tour and designed by Greg Macainsh and Uschi Flett. Performing Arts Collection.

Without a doubt the highlight of the week has been trawling through the Performing Arts Collection's Skyhooks stash. The JUKE magazine archive itself has some 12 folder of photographs, then there are Kathleen O'Brien's amazing live performance shots, costume drawings, and the costumes themselves. We have also found some good through-lines and cross-references for sub-themes like the role of television and fandom in popular music.

We are still aiming to have models for our three levels of content (pop-ups, events and extension modules) by Christmas but the days seem to racing by! As you are probably aware, Julian has also been working on finishing the Ballets Russes doco and filming interviews for work we have been asked to do by UTS which all needs to be done by 20 December so time is very tight.

I'm hoping for at least one more post before Christmas but in case I don't get another chance thanks for making me feel so welcome. Next year is going to be awesome!

Caz

PS: Just a reminder that our new Communication Strategy can be found in the VCN Project folder on the L:drive.

Ballets Russes content for FUSE

Costume designby Leonard French for the Vizier, Nutcracker, Ballet Guild, 1953. The Arts Centre, Performing Arts Collection

As discussed at our last meeting DEECD have requested some 'hot content' for the ministerial launch of FUSE in January so Julian and I have been working on a short documentary piece inspired by our recent Ballets Russes exhibition. The exhibition is currently on tour in Shepparton and will be off to Hamilton in March so we thought that it was a good opportunity to provide regional teachers with some content they could use either in isolation or in conjunction with a visit to the exhibition.

The doco will run for about 8 minutes and includes excepts of curators Steve Tonkin and Margot Anderson giving floortalks in Gallery 1 interspersed with still images of the designs, photographs and artworks featured in the exhibition. The second part of the doco features the teachers and students from Bendigo Secondary College who attended a special costume design workshop following their visit to the exhibition. I've seen the rough cut and Julian has done a great job. Once it's finished I'll make sure to post it so you can all see it.

Next week we plan to start mapping out the 'event' module we are creating for Skyhooks - should be fun!

Caz