Summer 20/21 provided another opportunity to use the limitations posed by COVID as inspiration to try something new. While Victoria was opening back up, audiences were still cautious and reimposed restrictions were a real possibility. For us, this meant that our stalwart of programming – hands-on craft-based experiences indoors – had to be reimagined.
To create opportunities for safe participation and learning I needed to look beyond the museum’s walls and connect with our friends and partners – supporting each other to develop meaningful experiences for our community and visitors.
For our visiting exhibition Wildlife Photographer of the Year we partnered with the Geelong Botanic Gardens to run outside photography workshops and develop an Urban Wildlife Trail between the Museum and the Gardens.
Our other visiting exhibition How Cities Work provided a whole different challenge – as a hands-on exhibition targeted at children cleaning and safety became paramount to decision making. With visitor limits and closure periods for cleaning, it was essential to develop a program that encouraged engagement with the exhibition without overwhelming traffic inside the exhibition.
The solution was to drawn on the concepts of the exhibition – urban life and design – and take them out into the City. To explore how cities work within the example of our own city: Geelong. I conceptualised an idea that involved a map-based scavenger-hunt style activity that revealed hidden or overlooked features of the city. Then working with a range of City departments, organisations and business, refined the activity to seven key sites to discover.
I engaged the exhibition artist, James Gulliver Hancock, to build on the artistic theme in the exhibition and create an illustrated map of Geelong. This beautiful map guided the participants around the city to the seven sites. At each site they collected a further illustration, with information about the specific City feature, which could be added to their map, with some becoming pop-ups or lift-flaps, similar to the How Cities Work book. Five of the sites also had vinyl decals that revealed more details – such as what was under the pavement or inside the smart bin.
The activity, called How Geelong Works, gave us the opportunity to encourage participation in a COVID safe way that was also meaningful, locally relevant and hands-on fun!
Thornypebble's Pond 