Opportunistic destinations : transforming railway stations into sustainable urban centres

All over the world stations are changing to become new urban centres and destinations. Some flagship projects, like Atocha in Madrid or Grand Central in Manhattan, make great destinations with shops, restaurants, museums and exhibition spaces. The urban spaces around them have been redesigned to provide excellent public areas and rationalise functional needs. Suburban stations also have the potential to follow the same trend. After all, stations are places of high symbolic value, they are central to the life of many people and include all sections of society, while generating high footfall and stimulating the economy. For this reason, Station Master Planning must focus on 'place' as well as 'product' to respond to the multiple opportunities. Considering the need that designs of stations need to be sustainable and preserve and value the public spaces, this paper reflects on the case study of the station master plan of the Tottenham Hale Station in London where SKM Colin Buchanan applied opportunistic urban design principles and created a new, significant urban square for north London and a local destination for leisure and investment. The design methodology are transferred to the local context of Melbourne where the unique spatial circumstances of suburban stations along the New Regional Rail Link line are reviewed, highlighting how these stations possesses specific opportunistic and sustainable urban design answers.

Railway stations : public realm gateways to sustainable futures of our cities

Train stations are places of connection in our cities and are the gateways of urban space. They represent one of the most exciting places to experience. Some stations make great destinations offering shops, restaurants, museums and exhibition spaces to commuters. While new architecture at railway stations acknowledges heritage, the urban spaces around them provide excellent public areas and rationalise functional needs. Grand spaces with monumental structures, including constant movement of people and trains makes for an exhilarating experience. Modern or historic, great train stations add another level of excitement in the regeneration of our cities. Adding into the mix of the sustainability paradigm, place making of railway stations transforms into sustainable urban centres and signature architecture, but how does it support an environmentally sustainable future? This paper reflects the journey of exploring the challenging situations of balancing the requirements between historic, operational, functional, economic and innovative sustainable design solutions during the Flinders Street Station Design Competition in Melbourne. The author highlights how the unique spatial, social and cultural circumstance of this world-renowned city railway station possesses specific resilient and sustainable design answers to a public realm and city space that challenges established thinking.

Consultation unlocks interdisciplinary resources: A community museum evolving in the Kelabit Highlands, Malaysian Borneo

This article discusses the role of community consultation in the process of developing a community museum in the Kelabit Highlands in Sarawak. It reflects on the relationships between heritage conservation, cultural tourism and competing community aspirations.   

Photosharing on Flickr: intangible heritage and emergent publics

This paper argues that Flickr, a popular ‘photosharing’ website, is facilitating new public engagements with world heritage sites like the Sydney Opera House. Australian heritage institutions (namely libraries and museums) have recently begun to employ Flickr as a site through which to engage communities with their photographic archives and collections. Yet Flickr is more than an ‘online photo album’: it is a social and cultural network generated around personal photographic practices. Members can form ‘groups’: self‐organised communities defined by shared interests in places, photographic genres, or the appraisal of photographs. These groups are public spaces for both visual and textual conversations – complex social negotiations involving personal expression and collective identity. For one group, the common interest is the Sydney Opera House, and their shared visual and textual expressions – representations of this building. This paper argues that such socio‐visual practices themselves constitute an intangible heritage. By drawing on the work of scholars Jose Van Dijck and Nancy Van House, Dawson Munjeri and Michael Warner, the paper proposes that this enactment of intangible heritage is implicated in the broader cultural value of the Sydney Opera House

The unique inter-disciplinary requirements of a museum development : a case study of the Kelabit Highland community museum development project.

Each museum development presents complex and unique challenges. In particular, the Kelabit Highland Community Museum Development Project (KHCMDP) is a museum development that requires both discipline-specific and interdisciplinary collaboration to reach the common goal of the preservation and conservation of the fragile Kelabit heritage. Still in its infancy, however rich with potential, the engagement required to realize the development of this community-based museum, in the remote region of Bario in the Highlands of Borneo, offers a stimulating environment in which both discipline specific and creative interdisciplinary thinking are utilized to create a suitable and sustainable development. This paper will describe the process of extensive community consultation required by the interdisciplinary team of academics to address the areas of curatorial policies, preservation and conservation, the design of the built environment and the creation of the communication strategies for the project. It demonstrates the unique opportunity for diverse tertiary disciplines at Deakin University to further develop their knowledge of museology, preservation, identity creation and issues of representation and communication from an interdisciplinary perspective. Within each of the areas of concern, the interconnecting nature of the project has resulted in a strong intersection of each of the normally separate professional departments. Furthermore, adding to the complexity, this case study is a multi-disciplined research opportunity situated in a cross-cultural context.

Colonial museology and the Buddhist chronicles of Sri Lanka: agency and negotiation in the development of the palm-leaf manuscript collection at the Colombo Museum

The roles of colonial museums in South Asia have been understood in terms of the dissemination of museology within the British Empire. This has often underplayed the participation of local intellectuals in the formation of museum collections, and thus has not recognized their agency in the creation of knowledge and of longstanding cultural assets. This article addresses this in part through an historical case study of the development of the palm-leaf manuscript collection at the Colombo Museum in nineteenth century Ceylon. The article focuses on the relationships between Government aims, local intellectuals and the Buddhist clergy. I argue that colonial museology and collecting activity in Ceylon ought to be understood as a negotiated process and a number of reasons for this are discussed. This article contributes to an area of museological research that is exploring the roles of indigenous actors in colonial collecting and museum practice in South Asia and broader geographical contexts.

Coproduction and Casula's Pacifica Program: Initial research findings

This research takes Casula Powerhouse Art Centre’s Pacifica program as a case study to investigate the ways in which museum and galleries are involved in coproduction with culturally diverse communities. Coproduction is defined here as:Museum and gallery practice conducted jointly with communities or other external partiesThe benefits of coproduction are that it leads to more effective and efficient public services (including arts and cultural services) while also building the skills and capacity of the community. However coproduction is not easy, particularly because it requires public service providers and communities to work in ‘equal and reciprocal’ relationships.As an organisation with strong and strategic alliances to its governing body (Liverpool City Council), Casula brings a strong capacity for coproduction. Internally it has support and commitment to coproduction from across the organisation. The staff at Casula bring exceptional relational skills. The organisation’s capacity to coproduce draws heavily on their skills as cultural brokers and experience in community cultural development practice. The communities Casula works with bring strong cultural knowledge and practice, along with a desire to maintain and preserve these community resources. Casula’s coproduction work also meets external political needs for public services to deliver increased public value as well as a greater diversity in the profile of arts audiences.The key challenge for Casula Powerhouse’s coproduction work is the extent to which it aims for joint delivery of public services through ‘equal and reciprocal’ relationships with the community, or uses coproduction as a tool for community engagement and audience development. Advocates of coproduction in the public sector argue for its value as a means of delivering more effective and efficient public services while at the same time building the skills and capacity of local communities. A critical element of coproduction according to these writers and scholars is the development and delivery of public services through ‘equal and reciprocal’ relationships between providers and users.The value of coproduction for Casula Powerhouse and the Pacifica program is its use as a means of community engagement and audience development. Coproduction is a feature of the components of Pacifica that enable the participation of the community and provide entry points for audiences to engage with contemporary art. Evidence of this approach to coproduction can be seen in the dual ‘stakeholder’ and ‘audience’ role that the community have within the Pacifica program. The community is therefore both a contributor to Pacifica and a beneficiary of this work. The benefits Casula Powerhouse receives from the community’s involvement in Pacifica are greater public value of its work and stronger engagement with communities and audiences.Although coproduction may not be the focus of all aspects of Pacifica, the involvement of Pacific Islander communities in the program results in exhibitions and public programs that are not typical contemporary art gallery offerings. Pacifica is further evidence of Casula Powerhouse’s innovative and entrepreneurial approach to gallery practice. The use of coproduction also ensures Pacifica offers an authentic and distinctive gallery experience.

Exhibitions as sub-brands: an exploratory study

The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption of major exhibitions, often called blockbusters, as a sub-branding strategy for art museums. Focusing the experience around one location but drawing on a wide data set for comparative purposes, the authors examine the blockbuster phenomenon as exhibition packages sourced from international institutions, based on an artist or collection of quality and significance. The authors answer the questions: what drives an art museum to adopt an exhibition sub-brand strategy that sees exhibitions become blockbusters? What are the characteristics of the blockbuster sub-brand?

Museum exhibition practice: recent developments in Europe, Canada and Australia

'Permanent' museum exhibitions or galleries are usually planned for a life of seven to ten years, but not infrequently survive for thirty years or more. When change finally occurs, it addresses new approaches in ideology, disciplines, technology and fashion. This chapter surveys such shifts in transnational history and Aboriginal cultures presented in museums.

The interior of our memories: a history of Melbourne's Jewish holocaust centre

The Interior of Our Memories describes the development of the Centre within global Holocaust memorial activity, both during the Holocaust and in the following decades when many survivors made new lives for themselves in Melbourne. The story begins, not in March 1984 when it first opened its doors, but during the Holocaust, when survivors began gathering documents. The book provides a history of the Centre’s early days and examines its transformation from a collection of photos, documents and material objects into the modern, educationally focused organisation it is today. The book situates the Jewish Holocaust Centre within a broader context, exploring issues of memory, testimony, the role of the museum within contemporary society, and what we can learn from one of the worst tragedies in human history.

Visual communication design as a form of public pedagogy

This paper identifies visual communication design as a form of public pedagogy. Communication design practices aim to achieve the successful transmission of a message to a recipient in a visual mode. Understanding the theories and practices of visual communication design can assist in enhancing the reception of the communication, as these practices become a tool to increase the effectiveness of learning in a public space. To demonstrate this, I will use the example of museums as an informal place of public learning, and argue design, and in particular visual communication design strategies, are extremely important in the creation of successful learning. If participants are not engaged or entertained, their capacity for learning will diminish. Engagement depends on the representation of the information and the successful interpretation of that information by the visitor. Further, this paper will emphasize the vital role communication design plays in all forms of public pedagogy, not just within the museum context. However, non-designers create many public learning environments and although this paper argues the benefits of communication design to increasing the effectiveness of learning, it recognizes the narrow opportunities of applying this knowledge.