Present and be Pleasant

by Bronwyn Phillips, blog 7

As my Directed Study was drawing to a close I did present for the volunteers, Unley Council and  Flinders University. This was a last 10% for my Practicum and I needed to explain how I went about writing two statements of significance for the Unley Museum. This occurred in the Unley Council Chambers in a room upstairs with a projector etc. I did this as a way to tie together the work I did over the last 12 months. I was planning to use Michael Morrison’s fancy new presentation program Prezi.com (well, not his personally) but in the end decided to stick with Powerpoint. Elizabeth Hartnell (Museum Curator) and I thought Powerpoint more suitable to the type of talk I was planning.

It was a bit nerve-wracking leading up to it but I practised on a couple of volunteers the day before. They interrupted with questions and advice which was both good and bad. It is a bit difficult to keep your train of thought when people interrupt you and I planned to tell people the next day to wait until I had finished to ask questions but somehow forgot. One woman corrected me three times during the talk. Well, that threw me for a moment but I quickly recovered. I will never interrupt a lecturer again, promise.

A lively discussion ensued. It was well received, with the volunteers congratulating me and telling me they now know what I have done over the past twelve months. The Council staff was very interested too and have invited me to give the same talk to a wider audience. Other good things came out of it too. When I said I thought the museum need more art works represented in their collection it turns out the Council own a few and they are hanging in the council buildings. Now we need to accession them to the museum.  When we said we were a bit short on space it seems we can have access to more. All in all it has been a most rewarding experience.

What’s next? I distributed the statements of significance to the volunteers and then to the Friends of the Unley Museum. After everyone has their say they will go into the Policy and Procedures for the Unley Museum then to the Unley Council and then to History SA and then back to the volunteers. A round trip.

Information sources

Photographs from the Unley Museum site accessed at: http://www.unley.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=912&c=16929 on 16-6-2011.

Unley Museum’s Donation and Accessioning, published by City of Unley.

Unley Museum’s Emergency Collection Management, published by City of Unley.

Unley Museum’s Mission and Objectives Policy, published by City of Unley.

Unley Museum’s Visitor and Inquiries Procedures published by City of Unley.