Museums Australia National Conference

‘Interesting Times: New roles for collections’

Dates: 28th September – 2nd October.

Venue: The Conference will be hosted by the University of Melbourne on its Parkville campus.

Conference Website: http://www.ma2010.com.au/

The Conference Program, is based on the theme Interesting times: New roles for collections, and the sub-themes below.

Conference themes

  • Collections for communities: Using collections to tell the stories of all our communities. Includes use of collections to strengthen indigenous communities
  • Collections for cultural diplomacy: The role of collections in international and local diplomacy (including touring exhibitions, repatriation and restitution issues)
  • Collections and commerce: Leveraging collections to create revenue streams and support (e.g. sponsorship, friends groups, retail, catering, commercial marketing, intellectual property)
  • Collections in peril: War, terrorism, financial crisis, natural disasters
  • Interpreting and showcasing collections (through exhibition design, building architecture, new technologies)
  • Communicating collections: Understanding, researching and evaluating exhibitions, programs, audiences and non-attenders; new approaches to marketing and communications, including new media
  • A national strategy for Australia’s museums?
  • Collections for creativity: Using collections to drive creativity, for life-long learning, for healthy communities, to open minds
  • Using collections to preserve languages, intangible heritage and the ephemeral
  • Using collections for research: Includes ongoing and new roles for natural history collections; taxonomic research; new or unexpected research topics and methods
  • Fellow travellers: Organisations collecting outside the museum (e.g. Universities, hospitals, performing arts centres, corporations)
  • City museums: The living metropolis
  • A position of trust: The evolving roles of trustees, governors and boards
  • Don’t forget the present: Contemporary collecting
  • Collections and education (including the use of collections to support the national curriculum; collections and the digital education revolution; best museum education practice; museums in a box and other creative strategies for education collections)
  • Conservation and significance
  • Public programs, theatre and performance
  • Museums and environmental sustainability
  • Keeping up, or leading from the front? New technologies

Download the full program as a pdf here – http://www.ma2010.com.au/docs/MA2010_conference_handbook.pdf

A list of speakers can be found here – http://www.ma2010.com.au/other-speakers.asp