Some final thoughts and observations

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• “Enjoyment” is just part of the story: in John Holden’s opening keynote, he observed that the three main things that audiences want are to Enjoy, Talk and Do. However, several sessions brought our attention to the fact that we don’t always visit places for “enjoyment” – sometimes it’s to reflect on difficult realities or see things that open our eyes and tell us things we need to hear. The Holocaust Memorial in Andrea Witcomb’s talk, interpreting the complicit role of the English in the Irish Potato Famine (in Susan Cross’ talk), and Brad Manera’s talk about the role of war memorials are just some of the examples that emerged during the conference. Revealing difficult truths (and the way this can be sanitised by Government intervention) was powerfully brought home by Professor Peter Read’s closing keynote about the people who were “disappeared” to meet horrific fates during the Pinochet regime in Chile, and the different ways this had been memorialised subsequently. In light of this talk, during the Q&A it was agreed that “Enjoy” was only part of it – and maybe “Engage” is a better word. We can be “Engaged” in something we find difficult, upsetting or cathartic. We wouldn’t call it Enjoyment, but it’s worthwhile nonetheless.
• “Social Media Schisms” – the new “Digital Divide”? – during the conference there were many sessions showing how museums and cultural organisations of all shapes and sizes are using social media to reach new audiences and interact with existing audiences in new ways. Just some of the examples I saw were Kelly Eijdenberg’s Scavbot project (an iPhone based scavenger hunt through the Tasmanian Botanical Gardens); Andrew Bowman’s work on putting the small WA town of Carnamah on the Social Media map (his paper is online here); and Rod Annear’s armchair ride of social media tools from blogs to Google Goggles (the only presentation I saw all conference using Prezi!). But I noticed that there still seems to be a big gap between the people who ‘get’ social media, and those who still find it all a bit baffly and scary (and maybe a fad that will pass if they ignore it for long enough). Then there is a bit of a middle ground of people who have dipped their toes in the water and haven’t quite figured out what the fuss is all about, but are keen to learn. I noticed during one social media presentation, the person next to me passed a note to their companion along the lines of: “I can barely figure out how to use my personal email account – never mind this stuff!” It’s hard to pitch the same presentation to the skeptics looking for a reason to care, and the converts looking to see who’s using what new tools and gadgets. Hence my term the “Social Media Schism” – which appears to be alive and well in the cultural sector.
• Busting myths about Blockbusters: Carolyn Meehan presented some interesting visitor data from the Melbourne Museum’s last three ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions – Pompeii (2009), Titanic (2010) and Tutankhamun (2011). (Carolyn prefers the term ‘international travelling exhibition’ to ‘blockbuster’, but the latter is catchier.) Contrary to what many people had predicted, the Blockbusters do not seem to ‘steal’ visitors from the rest of the museum for the rest of the year. On the other hand, they do not necessarily bring in a more diverse demographic into the museum. Crowding is the biggest issue, which the Museum is looking at ways to address in the way exhibitions are organised. The three exhibitions each had a different business model: Pompeii was an in-house production using loaned collections; Titanic was an international exhibition that MM modified; and Tutankhamun was a ‘hosted’ international show over which MM had very little creative control. The museum has decided it prefers the former model, and will be pursuing this preferentially in the future. Following Carolyn’s talk, James Dexter reminded us that international exhibitions should not be considered one-way traffic – Australia should seize opportunities to export its own stories as well, such as the AC/DC exhibition (co-produced by WA Museum) currently touring the US.
• Together but apart: as one final reflection, I’ll observe that while there are many similarities between the ‘museums’ and ‘interpretation’ communities, as demonstrated by the synergies in the conference program’s content, the two fields also have very different histories, assumptions and scholarly traditions. This also became clear over the course of the conference. This made me think about my own place in the landscape – in some ways I’m from both communities; in other ways I sometimes feel like I’m neither. But exploring that idea further is a whole new blog post . . . .

More conference blogs

As a final wrap here’s a shout-out to my fellow conference bloggers:

• An Island Art – this is a wonderfully illustrated blog, complete with photographs and caricatures of the keynote speakers. There are posts for Day 1, Day 2 and Day 4.
• A further update from Thornypebble’s pond

On the Thursday morning I chaired a plenary session featuring Andrea Witcomb, Susan Cross and Denis Byrne. This session was broadly intended to kick off a day that was focused on the role of interpretation to give voice to sites and collections,  with the three speakers exploring the media of space, story and place respectively.

Andrea Witcomb: space, affect and difficult stories

Andrea Witcomb talked about the role of immersive environments in interpreting traumatic experiences. She began with a critique of the experience at the Watch House at Old Melbourne Gaol, in which visitors take the role of prisoners being processed.  Andrea posited that the role play and theatre of the experience had become a superficial end in itself, preventing visitors from considering the social significance of the site in greater depth – for instance exploring the complex social and power relationships between the prisoners and the police. The pacing of the experience, she claimed, left no place for contemplation. Her implication was that the experience did not successfully convey key parts of its interpretive message, much to the disquiet of some of my interpretation colleagues (who in 2009 had singled this project out as an example of excellence).

In did appear that Andrea’s critique was based on observation of the behaviour of a limited number of visitors over the course of just a couple of visits. The visitors’ own perspective, both during and subsequent to the experience, was an absent voice in the criticism. Did visitors engage in the theatre in an (apparently) light-hearted way and then reflect more deeply on it subsequently? Or is this possibility of depth indeed crowded out by the theatrics? Based on the available evidence, I’d contend that we do not know. However, it does seem fair to say that there is quite a disconnect between how the site is viewed from an academic perspective compared to a more practice-led one.

Andrea’s second example was a holocaust memorial, showing how design of immersive environments can be used as an interpretive tool to create a more nuanced message (some people thought the implied direct comparison between the Watch House and a Holocaust memorial was unfair; I’m not sure if this was the intent or not).

Given my research into the way visitors respond to environmental cues in exhibitions, I found Andrea’s descriptions on the uses of space, light and colour to evoke affective responses interesting, although I would have liked to have seen more about visitors’ responses. Having said that, her call to have more space for listening, dialogue and internal reflection in interpretive spaces was a compelling one.

Susan Cross: “Interpretelling”

As a counterpoint to Andrea Witcomb’s talk about space as an interpretive device, Susan Cross spoke about the interpretive value of story – coining the term “Interpretelling” as a mode of interpretation through storytelling. She practised what she preached, getting out from behind the lectern to add a level of performance to her keynote.

The key premise of Susan’s keynote was that humans are natural storytellers – it is the way we preserve and perpetuate the things that have meaning to us. Stories are contagious. Getting people talking is the ‘silver bullet’ of interpretation; it means our stories will continue to live on and be shared.

Good interpretation can pick up its cues from good storytelling: compelling characters; a narrative arc; suspense, revelation, surprise twists, resolution.  (Looking back at this now, it reminds me of a workshop facilitated by theatre director Teresa Crea at Adelaide Gaol, which was organised by the SA Branch of Interpretation Australia in 2009. We built our own stories inspired by and based upon the Gaol’s history, with some artistic license allowed. . . )

So while the storytelling ideas may not have been particularly new to me, Susan distilled the key points into a presentation that was well crafted, paced and delivered in a way that held the audience’s attention – in short, she told a story. (This made a refreshing change from the far too many presentations I saw that were essentially papers read out in a monotone – I can read it later online thanks! </rant>)

Another idea that Susan presented was the concept of broadening the ‘storytelling circle’ – making our stories relevant to a broader audience (particularly across cultures, to shed light on meanings that are implicitly shared within a cultural group), and also listening to the stories of others to add richness to our own experiences. This can be particularly important for sharing difficult histories and getting to grips with the less savoury legacies of our past.

I’m looking forward to participating in Susan’s interpretive writing workshop later this week.

Denis Byrne: Absent Stories & Seductive Mythologies

Rounding off the session, archaeologist Denis Byrne talked about the interpretive potential of place – and the implications of choosing to highlight (or ignore) certain footprints of history on the landscape.

Denis described his experience with cultural sites in Bali – between political upheaval at home and the imposition of assumptions from abroad, many stories of Bali’s historic and cultural sites remain silent. Creeping into this absence was a kind of mythology derived from the Western depiction of Bali as an island paradise.

This story was juxtaposed with Denis’ more recent work on post 1788 Aboriginal culture, and how it has evolved in this time (contrary to assumptions that Aboriginal culture did not develop and change in post-contact history).

It was the first time I had chaired a plenary session but it appeared to go well, with the questions and answers at the end bringing the threads of the three talks together into a single broader narrative about the roles of space, place and story. I also managed to introduce the concept of soliciting questions from the floor via Twitter – as far as I know a MA / IA conference first!

Last week I went to Perth to attend a national conference jointly organised by Museums Australia and Interpretation Australia – At the Frontier.

It was the first time these two organisations had jointly staged a conference, with over 500 delegates attending from around Australia (and a few overseas). Whereas there was a reasonable contingent of people, like me, who are members of both organisations, I would guess that the majority of delegates would have been more clearly from either the “Interpretation” or “Museums” camp, and may not have had much to do with the other organisation previously. This led to some interesting cross-fertilisation, and for me brought into sharp focus where the similarities (and differences!) between the two organisational cultures lie.

Although I wasn’t presenting any papers I had a pretty hectic schedule – in my capacity as Interpretation Australia’s Vice President I chaired a few sessions (including chairing a Plenary – a first for me!). I’m also on the organising committee of next year’s Museums Australia conference in Adelaide and so was busy spreading the word for that too.

Thus, while some others have been far more quick off the mark with their blogging on the conference, I’m still collecting my thoughts (not helped by the fact that I managed to lose my notebook on the last day of the conference!). Fortunately, I have the Twitter archive to fall back on, which given I was tweeting from two accounts in addition to my own (@InterpretAu and @MA_SA2012) is probably more or less a good summary of my notes anyway.

I’ll trawl through them and give my perspective over the next few days.