Creative activation of the past: Mechanics' Institutes, GLAM, heritage, and creativity in the twenty-first century
- Authors: Tsilemanis, Amy
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: This is an interdisciplinary, mixed-method thesis that explores contemporary curation as a means to creatively activate heritage collections and places. The central case study is Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute (BMI), in Ballarat, Australia, where practice and action-led research was undertaken by the curator over the three-year period 2016–2019. Creative connections between five interlinked areas are critically examined: heritage; curatorial practice, by which heritage sites, collections and experiences are managed; historic cultural organisations; their city contexts; and the ways in which such cultural work is valued. The framework for analysis encompasses museology, critical heritage, and approaches to cultural value. Contemporary urban Mechanics’ Institutes (MIs) are placed in the museum context both through historic parallels and their contemporary positioning in the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) industry sector. This is in order to ask how heritage collections, and the organisations that house and present them, can creatively connect with the publics they serve with greater connectivity and relevance. Exhibitions and events held at BMI within Ballarat city are treated as case studies. Together with qualitative interviews with staff in the Ballarat GLAM sector and urban MIs, insights derived illuminate the role and challenges of such cultural organisations in the twenty-first century. It is argued that, when employing the practice and energy of the curator, creative activations have the potential to open new points of entry to, and provide alternative perspectives upon, heritage places and collections. This is achieved through arts practice, organisational thinking, and bringing to life the links between past, present and future. In this process, new and dynamic measures of value can be explored and create dialogic encounters between people, heritage and ideas.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
- Authors: Tsilemanis, Amy
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: This is an interdisciplinary, mixed-method thesis that explores contemporary curation as a means to creatively activate heritage collections and places. The central case study is Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute (BMI), in Ballarat, Australia, where practice and action-led research was undertaken by the curator over the three-year period 2016–2019. Creative connections between five interlinked areas are critically examined: heritage; curatorial practice, by which heritage sites, collections and experiences are managed; historic cultural organisations; their city contexts; and the ways in which such cultural work is valued. The framework for analysis encompasses museology, critical heritage, and approaches to cultural value. Contemporary urban Mechanics’ Institutes (MIs) are placed in the museum context both through historic parallels and their contemporary positioning in the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) industry sector. This is in order to ask how heritage collections, and the organisations that house and present them, can creatively connect with the publics they serve with greater connectivity and relevance. Exhibitions and events held at BMI within Ballarat city are treated as case studies. Together with qualitative interviews with staff in the Ballarat GLAM sector and urban MIs, insights derived illuminate the role and challenges of such cultural organisations in the twenty-first century. It is argued that, when employing the practice and energy of the curator, creative activations have the potential to open new points of entry to, and provide alternative perspectives upon, heritage places and collections. This is achieved through arts practice, organisational thinking, and bringing to life the links between past, present and future. In this process, new and dynamic measures of value can be explored and create dialogic encounters between people, heritage and ideas.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
Histories of the Ballarat District Orphan Asylum, Ballarat Orphanage and Ballarat Children’s Home, 1866-1983
- Authors: McGinniss, David
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: The thesis outlines the development of three children’s residential institutions on the site of 200 Victoria Street, Ballarat East: the Ballarat District Orphan Asylum (1866-1909), the Ballarat Orphanage (1909-1968), and the Ballarat Children’s Home (1968-1983). These institutions are the historical precursors to the contemporary community service organisation now known as Child and Family Services Ballarat, or simply Cafs. The thesis focuses particularly on the shifting cultures of these institutions, to identify waves of change, surging and receding to form long patterns of alternating reform and repose. Established ways of operating overlapped with new and developing ideas, to create a dynamic environment constantly negotiating its relationships with government, communities and of course the families and children who came to rely on them. As a result, when transformative change occurred, it was difficult for leaders and policy-makers to recognise it as such at the time, as it was often experienced more as crisis and response. This provides a useful set of historical examples for current leadership and practitioners to learn from. Most critically, however, it locates the thousands of children who were institutionalised - eating, sleeping, playing, learning and working – as central to the narrative formation of identity for the historic institutions themselves, the contemporary organisation they have become, and the communities of Ballarat and beyond. Children were sent to these institutions from all over Victoria and Australia and made their homes in many different places when they left. Nevertheless, the stories and lives of the children from these institutions and the adults they have become are a key part of contemporary collective identity. The institutions are remembered with complex and contradictory mixtures of regret, loss, trauma and fondness, reflecting the mixed legacies that these institutions have left in contemporary Ballarat and beyond.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
- Authors: McGinniss, David
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: The thesis outlines the development of three children’s residential institutions on the site of 200 Victoria Street, Ballarat East: the Ballarat District Orphan Asylum (1866-1909), the Ballarat Orphanage (1909-1968), and the Ballarat Children’s Home (1968-1983). These institutions are the historical precursors to the contemporary community service organisation now known as Child and Family Services Ballarat, or simply Cafs. The thesis focuses particularly on the shifting cultures of these institutions, to identify waves of change, surging and receding to form long patterns of alternating reform and repose. Established ways of operating overlapped with new and developing ideas, to create a dynamic environment constantly negotiating its relationships with government, communities and of course the families and children who came to rely on them. As a result, when transformative change occurred, it was difficult for leaders and policy-makers to recognise it as such at the time, as it was often experienced more as crisis and response. This provides a useful set of historical examples for current leadership and practitioners to learn from. Most critically, however, it locates the thousands of children who were institutionalised - eating, sleeping, playing, learning and working – as central to the narrative formation of identity for the historic institutions themselves, the contemporary organisation they have become, and the communities of Ballarat and beyond. Children were sent to these institutions from all over Victoria and Australia and made their homes in many different places when they left. Nevertheless, the stories and lives of the children from these institutions and the adults they have become are a key part of contemporary collective identity. The institutions are remembered with complex and contradictory mixtures of regret, loss, trauma and fondness, reflecting the mixed legacies that these institutions have left in contemporary Ballarat and beyond.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
Avenue and Arch : Ballarat's commemoration. How are community attitudes to war and peace reflected in the civic management of the Avenue of Honour and the Arch of Victory?
- Authors: Roberts, Philip
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: This thesis examines the importance of memory, commemoration, heritage and militarism in relation to Ballarat’s Avenue of Honour and Arch of Victory. Inspired by Ken Inglis and other historians who have analysed war commemoration, the thesis argues that, led by the Lucas clothing company, Ballarat civic leaders and community members commemorated the war service and sacrifice of local soldiers, airmen, sailors and nurses by planting the 22-kilometre Avenue during 1917–19 and by constructing the prominent Arch in 1920. Although Ballarat voted against conscription in 1916 and 1917 and was a ‘divided’ society, the Avenue and Arch were able to unite members of the local community. From the 1920s, through memory and mythology during the civic maintenance of the Avenue and Arch, Australian community attitudes to war and peace were reflected, and a determined effort was made to remember the service and sacrifice of military personnel for all Australian wars. Discussion of the need for peace remained in the background until recent years. Important influences on the civic management were the collective memory of the so-called Lucas Girls, a group of former female employees of the Lucas clothing company, and of the members of the Arch of Victory/Avenue of Honour Committee. Increasingly, the embracing of the Anzac legend and an emphasis on loss and grief was reflected in the civic management. By 2017 the Avenue and Arch were in pristine condition and, through the Garden of the Grieving Mother, had transformed to symbolise the importance of remembering the sacrifices and grief of war and the need for peace. The project was based on documentary research and oral history, using an examination of newspaper and other documentary accounts from 1917–2017, a study of Arch of Victory/Avenue of Honour Committee papers and conservation management plans, research of relevant books and articles, landscape fieldwork and interviews with 26 people.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
- Authors: Roberts, Philip
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: This thesis examines the importance of memory, commemoration, heritage and militarism in relation to Ballarat’s Avenue of Honour and Arch of Victory. Inspired by Ken Inglis and other historians who have analysed war commemoration, the thesis argues that, led by the Lucas clothing company, Ballarat civic leaders and community members commemorated the war service and sacrifice of local soldiers, airmen, sailors and nurses by planting the 22-kilometre Avenue during 1917–19 and by constructing the prominent Arch in 1920. Although Ballarat voted against conscription in 1916 and 1917 and was a ‘divided’ society, the Avenue and Arch were able to unite members of the local community. From the 1920s, through memory and mythology during the civic maintenance of the Avenue and Arch, Australian community attitudes to war and peace were reflected, and a determined effort was made to remember the service and sacrifice of military personnel for all Australian wars. Discussion of the need for peace remained in the background until recent years. Important influences on the civic management were the collective memory of the so-called Lucas Girls, a group of former female employees of the Lucas clothing company, and of the members of the Arch of Victory/Avenue of Honour Committee. Increasingly, the embracing of the Anzac legend and an emphasis on loss and grief was reflected in the civic management. By 2017 the Avenue and Arch were in pristine condition and, through the Garden of the Grieving Mother, had transformed to symbolise the importance of remembering the sacrifices and grief of war and the need for peace. The project was based on documentary research and oral history, using an examination of newspaper and other documentary accounts from 1917–2017, a study of Arch of Victory/Avenue of Honour Committee papers and conservation management plans, research of relevant books and articles, landscape fieldwork and interviews with 26 people.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
James Curtis and spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century Ballarat
- Authors: Young, Gregory
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: This thesis is about the origins, growth, and decline of spiritualism in nineteenth- century Ballarat. It gives special attention to Rustlings in the Golden City, the religious confessions of James Curtis, a notable Ballarat pioneer and the city’s most active and prominent spiritualist believer and evangelist. In Ballarat, spiritualism was commonly regarded as little more than entertaining humbug, usually derided by the press as delusive nonsense. Though clerics occasionally condemned it as heretical and dangerous, few people took spiritualist ideas and practice seriously. Even so, Ballarat had its small core of devout believers. For these, spiritualism provided a route to direct, intuitive, knowledge of the destiny of the spiritual self, comparable to gnostic liberating self-discovery. Rustlings in the Golden City stands as a classic statement of Victorian-era spiritualism and James Curtis has claim to be regarded as Australia’s greatest nineteenth-century spiritualist. While the commitment of many prominent Australian spiritualists of the period was compromised by credulity, bad faith, and self-interest, James Curtis was guileless and sincere. His writings open a window on a neglected area of nineteenth-century Australian social and religious history. The historiography of the thesis is realist and empiricist, with the predominant methodology critical text-analysis. Its chief source is contemporary newspapers and journals and the publications of spiritualists and their opponents and critics.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
- Authors: Young, Gregory
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: This thesis is about the origins, growth, and decline of spiritualism in nineteenth- century Ballarat. It gives special attention to Rustlings in the Golden City, the religious confessions of James Curtis, a notable Ballarat pioneer and the city’s most active and prominent spiritualist believer and evangelist. In Ballarat, spiritualism was commonly regarded as little more than entertaining humbug, usually derided by the press as delusive nonsense. Though clerics occasionally condemned it as heretical and dangerous, few people took spiritualist ideas and practice seriously. Even so, Ballarat had its small core of devout believers. For these, spiritualism provided a route to direct, intuitive, knowledge of the destiny of the spiritual self, comparable to gnostic liberating self-discovery. Rustlings in the Golden City stands as a classic statement of Victorian-era spiritualism and James Curtis has claim to be regarded as Australia’s greatest nineteenth-century spiritualist. While the commitment of many prominent Australian spiritualists of the period was compromised by credulity, bad faith, and self-interest, James Curtis was guileless and sincere. His writings open a window on a neglected area of nineteenth-century Australian social and religious history. The historiography of the thesis is realist and empiricist, with the predominant methodology critical text-analysis. Its chief source is contemporary newspapers and journals and the publications of spiritualists and their opponents and critics.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
Dr Fanny Reading : 'A clever little bird'
- Authors: Debney-Joyce, Jeanette
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: This thesis is the biographical study of the ‘transnational’ life of Dr. Fanny Reading (1884-1974). Dr Reading came to live in the Ballarat area c. 1888 when she was four years old. Originally she was born in Karelitz near Minsk, Russia as Zipporah Rubinovitch. The thesis tells the story of her transformation and also the story of her family members because they were a close-knit orthodox Jewish family. Reading’s biography is of a migrant woman who belonged to a persecuted minority group, and who through force of character rose above the challenging circumstances of her birth. It serves to redress the fact that historically she has been overlooked. It confirms that at a grassroots level she mobilised the Jewish women of Australia and was a significant Jewish leader. As a transnational figure of considerable stature, Reading’s biography contains themes of place, class, gender, ethnicity and diaspora that are woven throughout the thesis. It covers her early childhood and adolescence in Ballarat, then her move to Melbourne early in the twentieth century where she became involved in Jewish youth activities and taught Hebrew at the St Kilda Jewish Congregation. The family name was changed to Reading about 1919. Reading entered the University of Melbourne firstly to study music and then medicine (M.B., B.S.1922.) After graduation, she went into general practice with her eldest brother, who was also a doctor, in Sydney. Inspired by a Zionist emissary Bella Pevsner, Reading founded the Council of Jewish Women in 1923. This organisation became the National Council of Jewish Women in 1929. Reading had a keen interest in the health and education of women and girls, the Hebrew language and Israel. She was held in high regard in both the Jewish and non-Jewish communities and received an MBE in 1961.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
- Authors: Debney-Joyce, Jeanette
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: This thesis is the biographical study of the ‘transnational’ life of Dr. Fanny Reading (1884-1974). Dr Reading came to live in the Ballarat area c. 1888 when she was four years old. Originally she was born in Karelitz near Minsk, Russia as Zipporah Rubinovitch. The thesis tells the story of her transformation and also the story of her family members because they were a close-knit orthodox Jewish family. Reading’s biography is of a migrant woman who belonged to a persecuted minority group, and who through force of character rose above the challenging circumstances of her birth. It serves to redress the fact that historically she has been overlooked. It confirms that at a grassroots level she mobilised the Jewish women of Australia and was a significant Jewish leader. As a transnational figure of considerable stature, Reading’s biography contains themes of place, class, gender, ethnicity and diaspora that are woven throughout the thesis. It covers her early childhood and adolescence in Ballarat, then her move to Melbourne early in the twentieth century where she became involved in Jewish youth activities and taught Hebrew at the St Kilda Jewish Congregation. The family name was changed to Reading about 1919. Reading entered the University of Melbourne firstly to study music and then medicine (M.B., B.S.1922.) After graduation, she went into general practice with her eldest brother, who was also a doctor, in Sydney. Inspired by a Zionist emissary Bella Pevsner, Reading founded the Council of Jewish Women in 1923. This organisation became the National Council of Jewish Women in 1929. Reading had a keen interest in the health and education of women and girls, the Hebrew language and Israel. She was held in high regard in both the Jewish and non-Jewish communities and received an MBE in 1961.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
Between the winter and the dog trap
- Authors: Griffin, Tony
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Thesis , Masters
- Full Text:
- Description: This research is concerned with a visual exploration and recording of that small area of the Golden Plains Shire on the outskirts of the Western Victorian city of Ballarat. Specifically I have investigated aspects of change as witnessed in the landscape within walking distance of my home between the Winter Creek and the Dog Trap Creek. The nature of change is significant as it shapes the physical, social and spiritual narratives played out before the frequent visitor.
- Description: Master of Arts
- Authors: Griffin, Tony
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Thesis , Masters
- Full Text:
- Description: This research is concerned with a visual exploration and recording of that small area of the Golden Plains Shire on the outskirts of the Western Victorian city of Ballarat. Specifically I have investigated aspects of change as witnessed in the landscape within walking distance of my home between the Winter Creek and the Dog Trap Creek. The nature of change is significant as it shapes the physical, social and spiritual narratives played out before the frequent visitor.
- Description: Master of Arts
Women in 'Ballarat" 1851-1871: a case study in agency
- Authors: Wickham, Dorothy
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text: false
- Description: This thesis argues that European women exercised agency in mid nineteenth century Ballarat. It develops an understanding of women as active agents who engaged with, and negotiated, relationships of power. It highlights the fluidity in gendered roles, the blurred lines between the public and private domains, and the complexity of colonial life and relationships. This social and feminist history situates women within the system of patriarchal power which systematically and overtly benefited men. It reveals the complex operation of patriarchal power in which women accepted, challenged, and resisted social values and constructs. Such a consideration of the structure of power dislodges the notion of women as oppressed bodies who passively accepted universal and monolithic patriarchal values, and instead highlights diversity within gendered power structures. Drawing on public documentation, narrative, biographical, and statistical information from a diverse, extensive, and comprehensive range of archival sources, this thesis utilises a form of microhistorical methodology to detail and analyse the ways in which colonial women helped to shape society. It then draws a broader interpretation from such analysis to locate this thesis among other feminist and goldfields discourses. Through the central themes of health, birth, death, marnage, family, law, religion, temperance, philanthropy, work and public protests, this study_ identifies strands of agency exercised by Ballarat' s colonial women during the city's metamorphosis from the heady early days after the official discovery of payable gold in 1851 and the subsequent expansion of colonial settlement, to the consolidation of the City of Ballarat in 1871. Women predominantly acted as domesticating, nurturing and civilising agents, their actions deriving legitimacy from patriarchal values and endorsed by men. Women also contested, challenged, negotiated, manipulated, resisted and rejected socially accepted values, while playing out their lives within the colonial society in which they lived.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
A public want and a public duty [manuscript] : The role of the Mechanics' Institute in the cultural, social and educational development of Ballarat from 1851 to 1880
- Authors: Hazelwood, Jennifer
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: Mechanics’ Institutes were an integral element of the nineteenth-century British adult education movement, which was itself part of an on-going radicalisation of the working class. Such was the popularity of Mechanics’ Institutes, and so reflective of contemporary British cultural philosophy, that they were copied throughout the British Empire. The Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute, established in 1859, instilled a powerful, male-gendered British middle-class influence over the cultural, social and educational development of the Ballarat city. The focus of this study is to identify and analyse the significance of the contribution made by the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute to the evolving cultural development of the wider Ballarat community, with a particular emphasis on the gender and class dimensions of this influence. This is done within the context of debates about ‘radical fragments’ and ‘egalitarianism’. Utilizing a methodology based on an extensive review of archival records, contemporary newspapers held at the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute, and previously published research, this study was able to show that, during the period from its inception in 1859 to 1880, the Institute became a focal point for numerous cultural, social and educational activities. As one of the few institutions open to all classes, it was in a position to provide a significant influence over the developing culture of the Ballarat community. The study has also identified the use made of the Institute’s School of Design by women and the contribution of these educational classes to preparing women for employment outside their traditional roles of wives and mothers. The thesis argues that despite some early radical elements, the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute initially espoused liberal egalitarian values. By 1880, however, the Institute was more readily identifiable as reflecting British, male, middle-class values.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
- Authors: Hazelwood, Jennifer
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: Mechanics’ Institutes were an integral element of the nineteenth-century British adult education movement, which was itself part of an on-going radicalisation of the working class. Such was the popularity of Mechanics’ Institutes, and so reflective of contemporary British cultural philosophy, that they were copied throughout the British Empire. The Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute, established in 1859, instilled a powerful, male-gendered British middle-class influence over the cultural, social and educational development of the Ballarat city. The focus of this study is to identify and analyse the significance of the contribution made by the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute to the evolving cultural development of the wider Ballarat community, with a particular emphasis on the gender and class dimensions of this influence. This is done within the context of debates about ‘radical fragments’ and ‘egalitarianism’. Utilizing a methodology based on an extensive review of archival records, contemporary newspapers held at the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute, and previously published research, this study was able to show that, during the period from its inception in 1859 to 1880, the Institute became a focal point for numerous cultural, social and educational activities. As one of the few institutions open to all classes, it was in a position to provide a significant influence over the developing culture of the Ballarat community. The study has also identified the use made of the Institute’s School of Design by women and the contribution of these educational classes to preparing women for employment outside their traditional roles of wives and mothers. The thesis argues that despite some early radical elements, the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute initially espoused liberal egalitarian values. By 1880, however, the Institute was more readily identifiable as reflecting British, male, middle-class values.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
- Authors: Kinloch, Helen
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: "This study of Ballarat and its Asylum covers the period between the 1850s and the early 1900s when an old-age pension was introduced in Victoria. It is essentially a case study. It argues that Ballarat's Asylum progressively developed and expanded upon a model of organised poor relief practiced among the industrial classes in England, in consequence of the perceived need for rapid capital expansion in Australia, and knowledge of the dangers associated with mining, building construction, and other manual work. The introduction of a secular education system in Victoria, together with enthusiasm among producers for technological innovation and skill development, led to changes in the nature and conditions of paid work, as well as to a push among workers and their sympathizers for greater appreciation of past contributions by older workers and the needs of the ill and/or incapacitated. This push was only partially addressed by the Victorian government in 1901 when it introduced the old-age pension."
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
Strangers in a strange land : Converging and accommodating Celtic identities in Ballarat 1851-1901
- Authors: Croggon, Janice
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: "This thesis examines the paths by which four Celtic ethnic identities, Cornish, Welsh, Scottish and Irish, responded to the specific society and culture of the Victorian goldfields between 1850-1901. The individual Celtic groups intersected, harmonised and contested with each other in a process through which they retained their identities and yet managed to move towards becoming part of a larger, more-encompassing unity."
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
- Authors: Croggon, Janice
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: "This thesis examines the paths by which four Celtic ethnic identities, Cornish, Welsh, Scottish and Irish, responded to the specific society and culture of the Victorian goldfields between 1850-1901. The individual Celtic groups intersected, harmonised and contested with each other in a process through which they retained their identities and yet managed to move towards becoming part of a larger, more-encompassing unity."
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
- «
- ‹
- 1
- ›
- »