expression of interest - mgnsw · seeking expressions of interest ... the project is built on...

Part I Expression of Interest Education Consultant for the Talking Machines Project

Seeking Expressions of Interest Education Consultant – to Assist with the Development of Educational Resources for The Museum of the Riverina Talking Machines Project The Museum of the Riverina, Wagga Wagga, is seeking EOI’s from suitably qualified consultants to deliver the educational resource component of this project. The educational resource will complement the new National Curriculum (Australian Curriculum History Stage 5: The Making of the Modern World) and will reflect key project themes, the interpretive and educational needs of community museum partners and schools based within those communities. THE PROJECT Talking Machines: reviving Riverina rural technology collections with video testimonies will capture the histories and stories of generations of Australian men and women who farmed the Riverina, through the rusted metal frames and once sharp blades of dormant farm machinery they used. The 11 community museums participating in the project are: The Museum of the Riverina, Wyalong Museum, Up-to-Date Store (Coolamon), Cootamundra Heritage Centre, Greens Gunyah (Lockhart), Temora Rural Museum, Pioneer Women's Hut (Tumbarumba), Tumut Museum, Batlow Museum, Whistlestop Museum (Weethalle), Junee Broadway Museum. The project is an initiative of the Museum of the Riverina and involves a partnership with the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences (formerly the Powerhouse Museum), Museums & Galleries NSW, Oral History NSW, the Wiradjuri Language & Cultural Heritage recovery program (Charles Sturt University), a local filmmaker and 11 community museums across Eastern and Western Riverina. The project has received funding from Arts NSW to deliver the project over a two year period (March 2015–Feb 2017). The project creates a series of thematic trails across the Riverina. Key objects have been selected from partner museums to support the development of these themes which in turn speak to Australia’s role in the industrial revolution – this is the focus of the educational resource. Further information on key themes can be found in Part II: Further project information. Other project outcomes include the filming of up to 40 video testimonies across 11 communities, new audio-visual interpretation for all partner museums and a Talking Machines digital tour available to download from the website of Museums & Galleries of NSW. THE EDUCATION CONSULTANT CONTRACT COMPONENTS The successful consultant will be expected to undertake consultation with key partners including contacts at the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Charles Sturt University, partner museums and with schools from each community.

It is anticipated that one of the first tasks the Consultant might undertake is local investigation across all of the communities participating across the Riverina with the intention of discovering:

1) If the schools in the project catchment areas are studying the Industrial Revolution (wheat growing, wool production, manufacturing).

2) The resources teachers need (online, available at museum, etc). 3) Whether the syllabus changes each year.

It is anticipated that the process undertaken to deliver a unique and engaging, relevant resource might involve a three stage approach as follows:

1) Consultation with stakeholders. 2) Provision of recommendations regarding appropriate content and format of

the final resource and the development of this content as agreed. 3) The trialling and promotion of the resource across key communities.

Following consultation with key stakeholders, it is expected that the appointed Consultant will present recommendations for key educational resource content and format to the project management team. BUDGET The total budget for delivery of the educational resource is $7,500 + GST and must include all labour, travel and project delivery costs. This may be payable in instalments as the consultant achieves relevant project milestones. The Consultant will be expected to deliver the framework and content for the education resource – the project budget includes additional allowances for graphic design and reproduction costs. TIMEFRAMES The project runs over a period of two years, however it is hoped that the Education Consultant might commence in May 2015, with relevant consultation and the educational resource complete by late 2015. ACCOUNTABILITY & PROJECT SUPPORT The project is managed by the Museum of the Riverina, who have also appointed a Consultant Co-Project Manager (Kim Biggs) to manage the project jointly with the Museum’s Regional Outreach Officer, Rachael Vincent. For the purposes of this contract the Education Consultant will sub contract works to Kim Biggs Consulting and liaise with and/or take project direction from Kim in the first instance. It is envisaged that the Education Consultant will work as a part of a team and the successful Consultant is encouraged to participate in team meetings and other project networking events. FURTHER INFORMATION & SUBMITTING AN EXPRESSION OF INTEREST Expressions of Interest should indicate:

The background experience and suitability of the Consultant.

The Consultant’s understanding of the new national curriculum and how it might apply at a local and regional level to the NSW Stage 5 History Syllabus.

The proposed project methodology and the Consultant’s preferred approach to the project.

An indication of critical project milestones and associated timeframes. Expressions of interest will be accepted by email until 4pm Thursday 30th April 2015 and should be emailed to [email protected]. Further information may be obtained by contacting Kim Biggs on 0427 933 278 or [email protected].

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Part II Further Information Talking Machines: aims, outcomes, rationale Picturing the project: summary of key themes

About the Museum of the Riverina

Talking Machines: reviving Riverina rural technology collections

with video testimonies

PROJECT SUMMARY This project awakens memories from a disappearing generation to vivify a national collection of significant, yet silent, farm machinery. With Talking Machines, the Museum of the Riverina will reach across generations to give voice to dormant farm machinery and capture hidden histories. In rusted metal frames and once sharp blades are the memories of generations of Australian men and women who farmed an unforgiving landscape. The project is built on strong foundations: a database of 25,000 historic farm machinery items, completed by Australia’s foremost rural technology expert, Margaret Simpson, Curator of Science & Industry at the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences (MAAS) formerly the Powerhouse Museum. AIMS AND OUTCOMES The Museum of the Riverina will collaborate with the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences (formerly the Powerhouse Museum), Museums & Galleries of NSW, the Wiradjuri Language & Cultural Heritage Recovery Program (Charles Sturt University), Oral History NSW, an award-winning local filmmaker, regional cultural consultants and 11 community museums across Eastern & Western Riverina to:

Deliver up to 40 filmed testimonies (4–10 minutes long) about rural life. This will be done by working with retired farmers and agricultural workers.

Install new audio-visual interpretation in each partner museum to connect the filmed testimonies to their respective machines, thus bringing collections to life with voice, sound and personal experience.

Develop a unique educational resource for the National Year 9/10 History syllabus that for the first time tells the story of Australia’s role in the Industrial Revolution and international export market. This will be delivered across the 11 museums, and will be made accessible to teachers online through the website of M&G of NSW.

Launch a Talking Machines online tour available to download from the website of Museums & Galleries of NSW. M&G of NSW will upload the filmed testimonies to the 'Trails' page of their website, branding them as a Talking Machines Tour of the Riverina.

Develop an interpretive strategy across 11 museums that embeds the significant machinery chosen for Talking Machines into future exhibition development. This will lay the groundwork for further resourcing around conservation, research and display to increase access to nationally significant collections. The strategy will also explore the potential to develop Talking Machines as a non-medical aid to defeating depression, managing dementia and the isolation felt in depleted rural communities.

PROJECT RATIONALE This is our last chance to record knowledge from a disappearing generation – knowledge of working the land with labouring beasts and pioneering machines. Talking Machines responds to a worldwide trend: using digital technology to articulate life experience through storytelling. Historians use this term to describe narratives that give order and structure to human practise. This project enables a

network of regional museums to fulfil their social role and respond to an ageing population. The project is underpinned by opportunities for agricultural tourism in the Riverina across education and leisure visitor markets, and grounded in the museum sector’s drive towards community engagement and collaborative working. The project is driven by an ageing population whose knowledge of rural machinery will be lost if not recorded in the next 5 years, significant regional rural technology collections that exemplify major historical themes that are absent in state and national museums, and a lack of educational resources explaining the importance of rural technology collections to Australia’s industrial past. Talking Machines will create an important cultural resource while reinforcing strategic alliances between state institutions, regional museums and volunteer run community museums. The project’s overarching goal: to safeguard and promote the Riverina’s valuable, but disappearing, farming history.

Coming together in partnership:

picturing the project

Talking Machines

Theme Subtheme Museums

Innovations & Imports

Innovations

Australian made: local manufacturers

Agricultural technology imports

Museum of the Riverina

Temora Rural Museum

Junee Broadway Museum

Tumut Historical Society & Museum

Green’s Gunyah Museum

Examples of key objects Sheepskin roller at Wagga Wagga. This machine harvested the burr which contained the seed for subterranean clover. In Australia in the 1920s, it was found that addition of clover to soil, plus the fertiliser, superphosphate, led to marked increases in pasture production. Sheepskin-covered rollers or drums picked up the subterranean clover burrs from scarified ground. A geared and revolving brush then swept the burrs into a hopper. This one was made by Hepburn & Lovett of Wagga Wagga, in 1952.

Nicholson back delivery combined reaping & mowing machine at Wagga Wagga, c. 1878. The reaper revolutionised grain production. Previously, reaping was done by hand with a scythe or sickle. With a reaper and mower, a saw-toothed cutter could slash a 1.2 metre swath, while horses walked on the stubble.

Machine for laying poison baits, Cohoe & Walster, at Junee. Rabbits were in plague proportions. Poison was a phosphorus compound mixed with bran.

Jelbart Tractor at Temora. After the 1920s, few tractors were manufactured in Australia as they could not compete with cheaper imports, mainly from America. Significant Australian makes like this 1920s Jelbart indicate the sophistication and creativity of Australian tractor production and design at the time.



Talking Machines


People

Managing the farm

Staying connected to Country

Women on the farm

Growing up on the farm

Pioneer Women’s Hut, Tumbarumba

Cootamundra Heritage Centre

Batlow Museum

Weethalle Whistlestop Arts & Crafts and Museum


Examples of key objects Apple Picking in Batlow. The gold rush of the 19th century triggered the demand for fresh produce, and Batlow’s orchards and farms began to grow. Fruit growing soon became a major industry, with the first cool stores in NSW built in Batlow in 1923.

Afternoon tea with owners of Shaftesbury Station and girls from the Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls’ Training Home. Many of the women, who still refer to themselves as ‘Cootamundra Girls’, arrived at the home as babies, others were taken from their mothers as small children.

Bill Browne, retired farmer and donor of ‘The Bill Browne Vintage Machinery Collection’, Weethalle. Long after other farmers had given up their horses for tractors, Bill continued using huge teams of up to 14 horses to pull his farm machinery until 1944.

Collecting Milk, Pioneer Women’s Hut, Tumbarumba. Kerosene tins were extremely useful – they could be turned into all sorts of household and farm items: milking and water buckets, storage, bins, even cake tins.



Talking Machines


Power

Horse

Hot air

Internal combustion

Steam

Green’s Gunyah, Lockhart

Tumut & District Historical Society Museum

Temora Rural Museum

Examples of key objects

Brown & May Steam Portable Engine at Tumut, 1889. This rare 16 hp steam engine provided power on the farm before the small stationary oil engine took over in the early 20th century. Portable engines were mounted on wheels and had to be moved from place to place by 3-4 horses. They were used for a variety of jobs on farms into the late 1950s.

Columbus Oil Engine at Tumut: a rare horizontal portable engine. From the beginning of the 20th century, internal combustion engines began to replace work formerly done by horseworks and portable steams engine on the farm. The Columbus Machine Co. was based in Columbus, Ohio, USA. Their engines were advertised as ‘the best designed and built engines in America.’

Horse Treadmill at Lockhart. Horses were the chief source of power on the Australian farm from the 1850s until after the First World War. Draught horses pulled wagons loaded with produce from the farm to the rail head, hauled ploughs, seed-drills and harvesters, and powered winnowers and animal feed preparation machines by walking on an endlessly revolving treadmill.

Hot Air engine at Lockhart. Hot air engines were developed as an alternative power source to steam engines. They had a low power output, were simple to operate, required a minimum of attention, and were reliable with far fewer moving parts than steam engines. Some small engines were used for lifting water out of stock wells and pumping water to homesteads. Few were made after the turn of the twentieth century but made a revival in the mid-1930s.



Talking Machines


Animals

Feeding horses

Milking cattle

Droving

Shearing

Breaking in horses

Cootamundra Heritage Centre

Tumut & District Historical Society Museum

Weethalle Whistle Stop Arts & Crafts Centre and Museum

Green’s Gunyah, Lockhart

Wyalong Museum



Englished made Bentall hand-operated chaffcutter at Lockhart. The vast number of horses on farms needed feeding. Chaffcutters were used on virtually every farm to cut hay into small manageable pieces to feed tired horses. This job was often undertaken by women and children with hand-operated machines like this one.

Two-cow milking machine at Tumut. Milking machines revolutionised dairy farming. The replacement of hand milking by mechanical means was a very slow process which began in the mid-19th century and was not fully completed in Australia until about the 1970s. With hand milking the labour was provided by the farmer's family and heard sizes remained small.

Sheep shearing machine at Lockhart. These machines replaced hand shears for shearing sheep in the late 19th century. It used to take 2 years of training and experience on the job to become a good hand shearer but with a shearing machine almost anyone could become a skilled shearer in a few days. The most popular type of shearing machine in Australia was the shaft-driven set up in shearing sheds and involved the shaft belt-driven from a steam or internal combustion engine.

Bill Browne, horse whisperer. Bill has farmed around the Weethalle district for most of his life. A skilled horseman with an incredible ability to handle animals, Bill has always bred and worked draught horses.



Talking Machines


Crops

Land clearing

Ploughing

Seeding

Harvesting


Weethalle Whistle Stop Arts & Crafts Centre & Museum



Clyde Whitlock plough at Wagga Wagga. Designed by Wagga engineer and blacksmith, John Whitlock, this plough symbolised a growing local and national agricultural economy. Ploughs like this were used around the 1890s, when Wagga, Narrandera, Junee, Coolamon and surrounds were producing 10% of the colony’s wheat.

Cohoe and Walster Stripper at Wagga & Junee. Significant in the history of the Riverina wheat industry, this horse-drawn machine stripped the heads of wheat from the crop. Made at ‘The Pioneer Foundry’ in Junee (est. 1892), Cohoe and Walster were the only local manufacturers of agricultural machinery in the eastern Riverina until about 1920.

Mallee Roller at Weethalle. Mallee country was difficult and expensive to clear by hand for wheat cultivation. The land around Weethalle was cleared with home-made Mallee rollers like this one. It is made from an old boiler and has a framework of tree trunks. At the end of the summer, flattened scrub and regrowth was burnt. A stump jump plough was then used to ride over the last of the roots.

Bill Browne’s Seed Drill at Weethalle. The seed drill deposited seed evenly in the right amount and covered at a uniform depth. The first American combines arrived here in the 1880s. Combine seed drills applied both seed and fertiliser (superphosphate) to the soil. Bill used this combine drill, made by H.V. McKay and pulled by 6 horses to sow his crop. Harrows were dragged behind to cover the seed.



Talking Machines

Theme Subtheme Partner museums

Water

Windmills

Building dams

Water carts

Up-to-Date Store, Coolamon

Temora


Horse drawn Link Noack Dam Sinking Scoop, for digging a stock dam at Coolamon. A man would walk beside the scoop using the handles to lower the mouth to fill it. Many areas of Australia taken up for grazing or cultivation had no natural permanent water supply. The building of ample water storage was a first consideration of the settler.

Horse drawn Meadowbank Tank Plough at Coolamon. This plough was pulled by 8 horses or a team of bullocks. Bullocks were preferred to horses for tank sinking as their hooves were less inclined to break up the soil. Before the post-World War II use of large bulldozers, the construction of stock dams was undertaken with horse drawn dam sinking ploughs and scoops.

Furphy Water Cart at Coolamon, 1920. Water carts were important on the farm for carting water for household and stock use. They also supplied water to run steam portable and traction engines when threshing in the field. The most famous Australian water cart was the Furphy.

Comet Windmill at Temora. Windmills offered a cheap method of raising water for stock. Comet was a popular brand made in Rockhampton, Queensland and at Dulwich Hill in Sydney from 1918.



Talking Machines

Theme Subtheme Partner museums

Pests

Rabbits

Wheat diseases

Wyalong Museum


Cootamundra heritage Centre



Alfa Hannaford Wheat Pickler at Wyalong. During the early 20th century, Australia’s wheat crops were ravaged by diseases caused by parasitic fungi which they threatened the continuation of many wheat varieties. This Australian-made wheat pickling machine helped to prevent disease by agitating the wheat in a solution of formalin.

Rabbit Fumigator at Wyalong. Beginning in Victoria in 1859, Australia’s rabbit problem was enormous. With vast open spaces, little human population to hunt them and no natural predators, swarms of rabbits in plague proportions crossed Victoria and reached South Australia and NSW by 1880. The extensive degradation of land from burrows and consumption of grass greatly affected Australian agriculture.

Lane Rabbit Traps at Wyalong. Rabbit control methods included bounty hunting, trapping, shooting, erecting rabbit proof fencing and poisoning. After the First World War there was enthusiasm for rabbit gassing or fumigating. The rabbit traps and fumigator tell this story.

Rabbit Skins and Rabbit Skin Quilt at Pioneer Women’s Hut, Tumbarumba. Seven to ten rabbits ate as much pasture as one sheep and their burrows being around trees and vegetation encouraged soil and land degradation. During the Depression, rabbit skins could make a warm quilt, and as well as being used for food, skinned rabbits could also be swapped for staples such as bread.

About the Museum of the Riverina, Wagga Wagga The Museum of the Riverina interprets the history and identity of Wagga Wagga and the Riverina through stories of people, place and environment. It enriches community life and encourages learning, innovation and creativity. More than just a social history museum, the Museum of the Riverina leads the way in developing new methods to approach and present cultural heritage in regional Australia. This means harnessing the potential of the region's artistic community to interact with social history in the museum space. With this emerging creative body of work, the Museum enacts a placemaking role, articulating the unique sense and scale of the Riverina through the imagination of the region's creative talent. Operating as a regional museum, a dedicated Regional Museum Officer provides a Sector Outreach Service for the Riverina. This involves engaging with state and national cultural institutions to assist in the sustainable management, interpretation and promotion of collections in over 35 community museums. Working within Wagga Wagga City Council’s Integrated Planning and Reporting framework, the Museum of the Riverina has the following objectives:

Through strong leadership, collaborative partnerships and innovative policy and planning, to develop as an exemplary regional museum and contribute to making Wagga Wagga a thriving, innovative city in which to live, work and visit.

Through education programs, lifelong learning and audience development, to offer an accessible recreational and education resource for the whole community.

Through best practice in collections management, to oversee the strategic development, research and interpretation of the permanent collections.

Forging sustainable partnerships to develop lively educational programs, travelling exhibitions and public programs targeting diverse communities.

To build a network of sustainable museums and collections in the Riverina by fostering collaborations across the cultural sector, and working with local councils to support strategic planning and sustainable museum development.

expression of interest - mgnsw · seeking expressions of interest ... the project is built on...

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