Central to the Museum’s role as a national institution is its focus on meaningful engagement with all Australians in the telling of their stories, and its commitment to the history and cultures of the First Australians.
The Museum’s corporate plan sets out an ambitious program of activities framed around locally meaningful outreach and two-way engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, organisations and communities.
The Cultural Connections Initiative comprises two separate, complementary programs: the Encounters Fellowships program and the Cultural Connections program. Together, the two programs connect the Museum with diverse cultural practitioners and organisations in 16 locations across Australia. The general intent of both programs is to support, develop and strengthen cultural practitioners and their organisations, and facilitate community-led projects and initiatives to manage, maintain, interpret and share cultures and histories.
Encounters Fellowships program
The fellowships program offers six Indigenous cultural workers the opportunity to gain professional development in a unique hands-on program that includes placements at the National Museum of Australia and other cultural institutions in Australia and the United Kingdom. Appointed in late 2018, the fellows were chosen from a highly competitive pool of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander applicants from around Australia. Each fellow will generate a business case for a community project related to their own area of interest.
The Museum welcomes Naomi Appleby (Nyamba Buru Yawuru, Broome), Kyra Edwards (Mount Flora Regional Museum, City of Stirling), Kyra Kum-Sing (Boomalli Artists, Sydney), Harold Ludwick (James Cook Museum, Cooktown), John Morseu (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra) and Sherika Nulgit Duckhole (Mowanjum Aboriginal Art and Culture Centre, Derby).
While some components of the program will take place within participants’ own communities, the 2019 cohort will spend several weeks in Canberra, where they will engage with the Museum and local partners including AIATSIS, the National Library of Australia, the National Gallery of Australia and the Australian War Memorial. They will also travel to the United Kingdom for placements with the British Museum, The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts and the Royal Greenwich Museum. The intensive 12-week professional development program stretches across several months of 2019, with further programming in 2020 and beyond.
Cultural Connections program
The Cultural Connections program supports professional development and employment opportunities for capacity-strengthening projects that Indigenous communities have prioritised. Over a two-year period, the Cultural Connections program will provide funding and support for several full-time, part-time and casual Indigenous Project Officer (IPO) positions to lead the delivery of workshops, exhibitions and educational activities. The program will also engage local cultural educators and intermediaries, community consultation officers, producers, filmmakers and photographers, emerging curators, artists, musicians and visual arts educators.
Ten organisations across the east coast of Australia have been identified as potential partners. These organisations are established regional leadership groups such as land councils, local councils (in partnership with local Indigenous advisory committees) and arts organisations. Each partner organisation will be offered mentoring and professional development opportunities for their IPO and cultural/creative workers through placements and collection access visits. The program will help strengthen and diversify skills, both cultural and professional, and provide research access to collections and specialists to support planning and development of community-based projects and activities.
Agreements have been signed with the Cook Shire Council, Eastern Zone Gujaga Aboriginal Corporation, La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council and Four Winds Concerts Incorporated. Negotiations with the remaining partner organisations also progressed this year with a view to finalising agreements in 2019–20. A guiding principle for the Cultural Connections program is ‘co-design’, which means that each partnership and agreement is unique, shaped at the local level through a collaborative consultation process.
The Museum is also keen to take part in global conversations around supporting capacity-building in Indigenous communities. In June 2019, Carly Davenport Acker, the Museum’s Manager, Cultural Connections Initiative, presented at UNESCO’s Culture 2030 | Rural–Urban Development: The Future of Historic Villages and Towns conference held in Meishan, China, as part of a session themed ‘The creative economy, community engagement and cultural tourism to alleviate poverty’.
Working directly with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to develop skills and professional capabilities, create employment and facilitate locally relevant, impactful community projects will contribute to the strengthening and sustainability of communities in the short and longer term. The programs enable the transmission of important cultural knowledge, as well as the generation of new insights and understandings that benefit the Museum and its partners.