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Australian Centre
Teaching and Learning Australia:
re-thinking the archives in the Australian Humanities
Friday 10 April | 9.15am – 5.00pm
ABSTRACTS
Janine Barrand
The rock star and the archive
In 2007 Arts Centre Melbourne presented an exhibition exploring Nick Cave’s creative endeavour. Janine
Barrand, Director of Collections will discuss how this became a collaboration with Nick Cave thereby
illuminating the archive held by the Performing Arts Collection. Its many manifestations will also be
explored including Nick Cave Stories and the 2014 film 20,000 Days on Earth.
Janine Barrand is the Director of Collections at Arts Centre Melbourne where she is responsible for the
Australian Collection of Performing Arts. Janine has worked in museums and the performing arts for over
30 years and has a special interest in popular music. She has curated major exhibitions exploring the
career and influence of Australian performers including Kylie Minogue, Nick Cave and the story of women
and popular music along with developing strategies to engage audiences in understanding and
appreciating performing arts history and the creative industries.
Hannes Berger / Lucy Spencer
Performing Arts Collection & Learning and Access programs at Arts Centre Melbourne
Our presentation will be an introduction to Performing Arts Collection and the Learning and Access
programs at Arts Centre Melbourne. We will provide a couple of examples of recent projects, an overview
of online and physical collection content available for research, and ask the audience for feedback and
ideas on programs and services.
Hannes Berger is Program Manager for Access and Community at Arts Centre Melbourne. He is
responsible for developing learning opportunities and public programs around a range of Arts Centre
Melbourne programming. He produced the interactive performance/workshop Spinout: Alcohol
Awareness Program – in collaboration with the Drug Education team at DEECD – which tours Victorian
schools annually, and developed an ongoing Teacher PD offer – together with the Multicultural Education
unit at DEECD – around the Kenneth Myer Asian Theatre Series.
Melissa Bellanta
On Writing a Larrikin History: Cultural and Criminal Histories in the Archive
In this talk I discuss how I used the archive to produce a social and cultural history of disorderly urban
youth in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Australia – the youth known as ‘larrikins’ in the day – and some of
the many challenges involved.
Dr Bellanta is a Senior Lecturer in Australian History at the Australian Catholic University in Sydney. She
researches gender, sentimentality, underprivileged youth, street culture and popular culture in lateVictorian and twentieth-century history. Published by the University of Queensland Press, her book
Larrikins: A History won the prestigious Ernest Scott Prize for the best monograph on Australian or New
Zealand history in 2013. She has also published widely in journals such as History Workshop Journal,
Cultural and Social History, the Journal of Social History, Australian Historical Studies and Australian
Feminist Studies, and has won Australian Research Council and Australian Historical Association grants
for her research.
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Kamarra Bell-Wykes
Kamarra Bell-Wykes of The ILBIJERRI Theatre Company will be discussing the company’s shows
CORRANDERK and BEAUTIFUL ONE DAY, both which use archival information. Kamarra will outline
the educational aspects of the theatre productions and the processes involved in developing
accompanying resources, as well as the importance and effect of theatre as a vehicle for history.
Kamarra Bell-Wykes is a descendent of the Jagera and Butchulla people of South-East Queensland. She
first became a member of ILBIJERRI in 1999, and since then has served on the board and worked in
administration and project management roles. She has also written a number of ILBIJERRI’s healtheducation shows including Chopped Liver, Body Armor and North West of Nowhere. Kamarra holds a
Bachelor of Teaching and Learning and worked as a teacher and youth worker; she is thrilled to bring
these skills to ILBIJERRI as the newly appointed Education Manager where she can combine her loves
of theatre and education.
Susan Bye
Australian Centre for the Moving Image: Accessing the Archive
In its unique role as a cultural institution devoted to screen culture, ACMI is committed to moving image
education and creative exchange. ACMI Educator, Susan Bye, will explore and explain ACMI’s ongoing
review and renewal of its onsite and online delivery of resources. She will introduce the Mediatheque, an
outstanding onsite resource centre, and highlight ACMI’s online resources including ACMI Generator, 15
Second Place, the refreshed ACMI website and a range of exhibition-related resources.
Dr Susan Bye is an Education Programmer at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and Associate
of La Trobe University. She has published extensively, particularly in the areas of Australian Screen
Comedy, Australian Television History and Film Education. She is currently co-editing the Companion to
Australian Cinema with Felicity Collins and Jane Landman. In her role at ACMI, she presents onsite
screen literacy programs, develops exhibition and film resources for teachers and contributes to ACMI’s
expanding digital Education program.
Nerida Campbell
Dark Inspiration: the NSW Police forensic photography archive
The NSW Police Forensic Photography Archive is housed at the Justice & Police Museum in Sydney. It
contains over 130,000 negatives taken by NSW Police photographers during criminal investigations
between1910-1964. Students, scholars, artists, musicians, writers and fashion designers from around the
world have found inspiration in the images from the archive. Curator Nerida Campbell will speak about
the archive, its diverse users and some of its most intriguing stories.
Nerida Campbell is a Curator at Sydney Living Museums. She has spent the past 10 years working with
the collections at the Justice & Police museum, curating exhibitions that explore crime, policing and
concepts of justice.
Katrina Dean
Unpacking the Germaine Greer Archive
This talk will give a sneak preview of the archive in the field, as it was being packed up for transport to
Melbourne. This will include an overview of what is in the archive, and suggest how it might be used in
research, teaching and learning.
Dr Katrina Dean is the University Archivist at the University of Melbourne and has published on history of
nineteenth and twentieth century sciences and technology. She is a co-editor of William Henry Fox
Talbot, Beyond Photography (Yale University Press, 2013).
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Jenny Fewster
Catching lightning in a bucket. AusStage - preserving the ephemeral
The AusStage database is an open and accessible online resource. AusStage preserves important data
that is not recorded elsewhere; there is no other comparable dataset on Australian performance, and no
international database of live performance as extensive as AusStage. AusStage provides a common
verifiable source of reliable quantitative information for comparative analysis, access to evidence and
artefacts for in-depth analysis, and visualisations that reveal hidden patterns in the data. AusStage
enables researchers to compile national and regional surveys of live performance in terms of cultural
significance, social participation and economic impact. For archives and collections, AusStage supports
discovery, access and preservation of their holdings.
Jenny began working on performing arts databases in the early 90’s in her role as Research Assistant at
the Performing Arts Collection of South Australia. She joined AusStage when the project began in 2000
and was appointed Project Manager in 2003. During her time with AusStage the project has been
successful in gaining over $4 million (AUD) in funding from the Australian Research Council, Australian
National Data Service, National eResearch Architecture Taskforce, eResearch South Australia and the
Australian Access Federation. Jenny is active in nurturing relationships between university researchers
and cultural collections. She is currently the Deputy Chair and Secretary of the Performing Arts Heritage
Network of Museums Australia and has served on that Committee for the last seven years.
Christine Healey
Inquiry-based learning in the Museum
Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is an exciting participant-centred teaching methodology co-developed
during the 1980s by cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen and veteran museum educator Philip
Yenawine at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The goal of VTS is not to teach the history of a work
of art or object but rather, to encourage close examination and thoughtful engagement in facilitated group
discussions. Trained VTS facilitator Christine Healey will outline the journey she has taken to pioneer the
use of VTS lessons and schools partnerships in Australian museums.
Christine Healey is the new Education and Volunteer Coordinator at the Shrine of Remembrance,
responsible for the development, implementation and evaluation of student and teacher programming,
online resources, strategic education partnerships and the overall volunteer program. Previously
Christine managed education programming at Heide Museum of Modern Art for five years. Christine is a
PhD Candidate at RMIT University researching the practices and pedagogies of museum educators. In
2013 Christine was awarded a Hugh Rogers Fellowship by the Melbourne Boston Sister Cities
Association to extend her research to include an American museum, the Isabella Stewart Gardner
Museum. Christine is the secretary, Museums Australia Education and social media manager, Education
Network Victoria. Christine tweets at @ChristineHealey.
Nick Henderson
Queering the archive: creative possibilities in public history
Communities now expect archives to be much more than repositories of records; as with museums and
galleries, archives are expected interpret and celebrate their collections, through exhibitions, publications
and various digital platforms. This archival public history is also one that is expected to reflect and
celebrate the diversity of their audiences, and for large institutional archives, this often means sharing
their institutional authority through community partnerships. But what does this mean for small community
archives, with few resources and those situated within diverse and marginalised communities? The
Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives has an active exhibition program that provides some creative
possibilities for queering the archive and celebrating this shift in archival public history.
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Nick Henderson is curator and archivist, and is currently a volunteer Committee Member of the Australian
Lesbian and Gay Archives. Professionally he is Manager of Archival Description and Personal Records at
the National Archives of Australia. Previous roles have included curatorial and archival positions with the
National Gallery of Australia, National Library of Australia, and the Performing Arts Collection at the Arts
Centre Melbourne, as well as diverse program and policy roles from Senior Liaison Officer, APEC 2007
Taskforce, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, through to Telecommunications Advisor for
The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Senator Stephen Conroy.
Kerry Kilner
The Art of Story: AustLit and Resources for Australian Literary Studies
AustLit is a vitally important resource for information about and research into all aspects of the art of story
in Australia. It is the longest running database of its kind, covering all forms of creative writing from
literature to performance works (including film, television, and storytelling), through criticism, life writing,
literary journalism, travel writing and more. AustLit is unique on the world stage. No other country has
attempted to map its literary culture to the same extent as have the AustLit collaborators over the past
decade and a half. This paper will give the audience an insight into the breadth and depth of this
singularly important cultural history resource, consider its uses, and address some of the challenges and
possibilities we will face in the coming years.
Kerry Kilner is Director and General Editor of AustLit (www.austlit.edu.au) and a Research Fellow in the
School of Communication and Arts at The University of Queensland. She has been involved in AustLit
since its inception and has a passion for developing resources that are relevant, useful, and diverse for
the research and teaching sector.
Antonina Lewis
Elusive, Allusive, Evidentiary: seeing through the mesh of the archive
Archives are not what you think. After more than a decade working as an archivist I continue to be
surprised (and, sometimes, disheartened) by people’s expectations of what an archive is. Over the
course of my career I have had my own notions of the archive challenged and expanded, however my
belief in the very first lessons I learned has not altered: archive = record + context; know your bias; and
be prepared to see the unexpected. Research projects undertaken at the eScholarship Research Centre
(including ‘The Australian Women’s Register’ and the ‘Trailblazing Women and Law’ project) use archival
practices and digital technologies to elucidate where sources of knowledge might be found; express the
relational contexts in which they are situated; and surface unexpected histories. As Arlette Farge notes,
the archive is “an excess of meaning”. Archivists, scholars and historians bear the responsibility – and
the freedom – of taking this excess of meaning, and proving it meaningful.
Antonina Lewis holds a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Arts and a PhD in the Humanities, augmented by
over a decade of professional practice as an archivist, including positions at the Public Records Office
Victoria, National Archives of Australia, and Victoria University. Her current role at the University of
Melbourne’s eScholarship Research Centre sees her working on archival projects with a range of
academic, cultural and government stakeholders. Dr Lewis is a past recipient of an Australian Society of
Archivists’ Mander Jones Award for publications excellence, and a sitting member of the editorial board
of the journal Provenance.
Daniel Marshall
Queering archives, the Queer Youth Education Project and Queer History Month in Australian
schools
In this short presentation, I will reflect on the role of archives in the Australian Humanities by drawing on
my work establishing the Queer Youth Education Project (through which I run free workshops on queer
Australian history with young people, teachers, youth workers and other interested people) and my
research in archive studies, queer youth histories and sex education. This talk will raise some of the key
theoretical challenges generated by the so-called archival turn in gender and sexuality studies. It will also
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include a discussion of some contemporary challenges for practice by discussing the idea of organising a
Queer History Month in Australian schools. Through these discussions, my presentation will illustrate
some of the ways that relationships between sexuality, gender, archives and the community are currently
being rearranged, yielding a range of insights not the least being the prospect of a sex/uality education
for young people which exceeds a narrow focus on health.
Daniel Marshall is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, Melbourne.
His publications include the two-volume edited collection, Queering Archives (Duke University Press,
2014 and in press; published as special issues of Radical History Review, with Kevin Murphy and Zeb
Tortorici) and the edited book, Secret Histories of Queer Melbourne (Australian Lesbian and Gay
Archives, 2011; with Graham Willett and Wayne Murdoch). He has been a volunteer with the Australian
Lesbian and Gay Archives for over a decade, including serving as President (2011–13). He is currently
working on the manuscript for his first monograph, Growing Queer, and establishing the Queer History
Month collective to organize around the inclusion of queer history in Australian schools. He is also a
Chief Investigator on the “Queer Generations” ARC Discovery Project (2015-2017), along with colleagues
at UNSW, Monash and UWA, investigating experiences of growing up queer in Australia at different
points in time.
Jan Molloy
Identity: yours, mine, ours, What does it mean to belong in Australia today?
This presentation will look at the ways in which the Immigration Museum’s newest permanent exhibition
provides a context for conversations about Identity and Belonging in Australia today. Identity: yours,
mine, ours is an exhibition about identity – who we are, who others think we are, and what it means to
belong and not belong in Australia. The exhibition focuses on how our cultural heritage, languages,
beliefs, and family connections influence our self-perceptions and our perceptions of other people –
perceptions that can lead to discovery, confusion, prejudice and understanding. A multi-platform online
digital media project “Talking Difference” designed to facilitate dialogue about cultural difference and
promote diversity has been developed in conjunction with the exhibition. A biennial Symposium and a
Talking Difference in Schools program is also part of the outreach programs connected to the Identity
exhibition. The session will offer some perspectives on the exhibition and related programs and the ways
in which teachers and students have responded to the content.
Jan Molloy coordinates Humanities Education Programs at the Immigration Museum. Her role involves
the management of research, development and delivery of programs for schools and education
professionals based on the content of the Humanities Migration Collection and the onsite exhibitions at
the Immigration Museum
Kimberley Moulton
Victorian Aboriginal Art Practice and the Museum Archive- Building Cultural Strength and Valuing
Knowledge.
Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre at Melbourne Museum has a key focus on celebrating the living
cultures of Aboriginal Victoria through the community arts program in the Birrarung Gallery. Cultural
material and the historical archive held in Melbourne Museum are intrinsically linked to the Victorian
Aboriginal community arts practice and are integral to the connection to identity, country and community.
There has been a significant movement of Koorie art practitioners using the museum archive to connect
to culture and revive cultural practice. This presentation will explore past projects that articulate why it is
important for supported community engagement with collections.
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Kimberley Moulton is a proud Yorta-Yorta woman and is the Project Officer for Bunjilaka Aboriginal
Cultural Centre at Melbourne Museum and curator of exhibitions for the Birrarung Gallery, a space
dedicated to celebrating Victorian Aboriginal culture through contemporary art. Kimberley was an
assistant curator and worked in community consultation for the First Peoples exhibition at Bunjilaka which
opened 2013. She is an alumnus of the British Council ACCELERATE program and National Gallery of
Australia’s Wesfarmers Indigenous Leadership program and member of the board for Banmirra Arts Inc.
Kimberley is currently completing postgraduate studies at the University of Melbourne.
Angela Ndalianas
Play it Again – Australian and New Zealand Videogames of the 1980s
Games are one of the most significant cultural forms of our times and yet they are poorly documented in
Australia and New Zealand. Knowledge about the history of games is overwhelmingly held by private
collectors and fans, with ephemera and other primary sources located amongst the general public. This
paper discusses the Popular Memory Archive (PMA), an online portal of the “Play It Again” game history
and preservation project. The PMA taps into what is, effectively, a collective public archive by providing a
technique for collecting information, resources and memories from the public about 1980s computer
games.
Angela Ndalianis is Professor in Screen Studies at Melbourne University. Her research interests include:
film history and theory; genre studies, with expertise in the horror and science fiction genres;
entertainment media and media histories; the contemporary entertainment industry and the convergence
of films, video games, television, comic books and theme parks. Her current research explores the
important role played by entertainment media in the advancement of robotics. Her publications include
Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment (MIT Press 2004), Science Fiction
Experiences (New Academia 2010), The Horror Sensorium; Media and the Senses (McFarland 2012)
and The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero (editor, Routledge 2008).
Heidi Norman
Building an archive: contemporary Aboriginal social and political research
This paper reports on two research projects that for the most part documented significant moments in
Aboriginal social and political life but for which there had been no previous research undertaken and
where the archive was limited. This paper draws on those examples to consider research that contributes
to building cotemporary community generated archives and how they can be best made available for
scholars and the community alike and how this archive can be of service for undergraduate teaching.
Dr Heidi Norman is a Senior Lecturer in the Communications Program in the Faculty of Arts and Social
Sciences (FASS) at the University of Technology, Sydney. Her research focuses on NSW Aboriginal
history and politics with particular emphasis on the modernising effects of rule, shared history and the
challenges of Aboriginal adjustment to modernity. She teaches in the areas of applied research and
Australian history and politics. She is a descendant of the Gomeroi people of north-western NSW. She
has a book out in May 2015 titled ‘What do we want? a political history of Aboriginal land rights in NSW'.
Lyndall Ley Osborne
Ancient knowledge, future pathways: cultural knowledge and the archive
According to recent significance assessments the AIATSIS collection is the “most extensive and best
contextualised collection of Indigenous Australia in the world”. As a major national keeping place for
Indigenous knowledge, it is also key research infrastructure and a source of information and knowledge
about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, cultures and histories for Australia and the world.
The value for education will lie in the interpretation and sharing of material, in co-design and collaboration
with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, to produce secondary materials supported by the
primary sources in the collection.
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Lyndall is a librarian who has also worked extensively as an executive manager in local government in
the fields of community, arts and cultural development and services. Joining AIATSIS in 2012 as the
Library Director, and now the Director, Collections, Lyndall has special interest in strengthening
discoverability of the AIATSIS collections for all people, particularly Indigenous people and communities,
and in engendering increased usage of the collections through the opportunities offered by technology,
the internet and social media.
Megan Perry
Far Out!, Reach Out and All Out!
Established in May 2009, Learning Services at the State Library of NSW was formed to fulfil the Library’s
strategic goals and priorities through the design, development, delivery and evaluation of new high
quality, responsive learning programs for K-12 students and teachers, lifelong learners, students of the
Library and Information professions as well as children and families. The school education sector is the
main focus with services and programs offered onsite, online and in rural and regional NSW. The
program involves students in an interactive workshop culminating in a viewing of some of the most
significant original materials held by the Library. Items on tour have included Captain James Cook’s shoe
buckles worn at Court to meet George III, the Mary Reibey letter to her Aunt from on board ship in Botany
Bay, 1792 and an Indigenous word list from the late 19th and early 20th Century.
This paper explores the relationship between storytelling, the use of artefacts and the historical enquiry
method to encourage young students to explore aspects of Australia’s history. It also speaks to risk,
responsibility and reward when making the Library’s collections accessible in new ways, to young people.
Megan Perry is the Manager of Learning Services at the State Library of NSW. She has managed the roll
out of a range of K-12 learning programs using new technologies to engage learners onsite, online and
on tour. Megan is a former history teacher and a teacher librarian with extensive experience in the
integration of information, communication and learning technologies within the curriculum in NSW and
Queensland schools. Megan holds a BA, a DipEd and a MAppSci and represents the State Library of
NSW on the National and State Libraries Australasia (NSLA), Literacy and Learning Project Group
Stefan Schutt
The Online Archive: where community and urban ephemera meet
This presentation will discuss Dr Schutt’s community-based digital archiving project, based on the
discovery of a hoard of abandoned signwriting documents (www.lewisandskinner.com). Dr Schutt will tell
the story of his online signwriting archive, and the subsequent community project, Keepers of Ghosts,
that emerged from this work. He will discuss how the digital realm can enhance both educational and
archival practice, especially through the use of crowdsourcing technologies.
Dr Stefan Schutt is a Research Program Leader at Victoria University's Centre for Cultural Diversity and
Wellbeing. His research interests revolve around people's everyday use of technology. Stefan is
particularly interested in young people and the intersection of technology, narrative and identity. Since
2001 Stefan has run a range of projects deploying virtual worlds, games, mobile phones and the Internet.
Stefan is a Chief Investigator of the national NBN-funded Digital Enterprise project. He is also co-founder
of The Lab (www.thelab.org.au), a national network of technology clubs for young people with Asperger’s
Syndrome, and creator of the Lewis & Skinner online signwriting document archive
(www.lewisandskinner.com). Before this Stefan ran the VicHealth-funded Avatar and Connected Lives
projects, which researched the use of technology by disadvantaged young people.
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Caroline Wake
The Performance Space Archive: A Premature Report
In January 2015, I started conducting research in the archive of the Performance Space, Sydney. Titled
Restoring the Contemporary: Remembering Live Art at The Performance Space and funded by the ARC
under its DECRA scheme, this project aims to analyse the archive as a microcosm of how contemporary
performance practices have evolved over the past thirty years. In doing so, it will argue that this rare
national resource can contribute to wider global debates about the changing relationship between
theatre, performance and live art. This presentation gives an account of my first three months rifling
through the board papers, grant applications and--best of all--performance documentation.
Caroline Wake is an ARC DECRA Fellow in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New
South Wales. Beyond contemporary Australian performance, her research interests include performance
made, by, with and about refugees; theatres of the real; and theories and practices of witnessing. She is
the co-editor, with Bryoni Trezise, of Visions and Revisions: Performance, Memory, Trauma
(Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013) and author of several articles which have appeared in
journals such as Theatre Research International, New Theatre Quarterly, Modern Drama, and Text &
Performance Quarterly.