Over the past 12 months, Council have worked with five volunteer led museums and historical societies in the region to support the digitisation of their collections. This includes Lake Tabourie Museum, Berry Historical Society, Kangaroo Valley Historical Society and Milton Ulladulla Historical Society.
The digitisation of these collection is funded by the NSW Government, through the Regional Cultural Fund. Council is one of nine local governments funded to digitise significant artworks, museum objects and archives in their regions.
The fund supports the development of cultural infrastructure in regional NSW. All projects adopted a hub and spoke partnership model to deliver their projects. Regional museums and historical societies shared equipment and expertise to digitise the significant objects.
The results of some of this work now features on Storyplace, a new website developed for museums and galleries to tell important stories from throughout regional NSW. The stories are inspired by the digitised objects from the collections of regional museums, galleries and Aboriginal Keeping places as part of this project.
The Storyplace project, managed by Museums and Galleries of NSW, employed professional staff and story tellers research, writing, editing and publishing stories directly on the online platform.
Shoalhaven City Council Mayor, Amanda Findley said, ‘our museums, galleries and Aboriginal cultural centres are the custodians of precious collections representing the history of our region. Many of these collections contain the only remaining records of some aspects of historic day-to-day life our Shoalhaven communities. Small collections are often unique to the places they are kept, and people relate to these stories in different ways to large collections.”
“Storyplace is a unique online space highlighting regional collections for a wide audience, it also encourages visitors to regional museums, galleries and cultural centres to see the collections in real life. The website provides a long-awaited platform to promote the importance and value of regional collections to be enjoyed now and well in to the future. Storyplace is a living and evolving archive, investigating people, places, communities and cultures from all over NSW.”
“The launch of Storyplace has been a long, rewarding journey. Behind the scenes, staff and volunteers worked tirelessly to document, conserve and digitise these valuable regional collections. Storyplace is the highly impressive result of this dedicated inspirational work,” Mayor Findley said.
Storyplace has been funded by the NSW Government through the Regional Cultural Fund.
Visit Storyplace website to enjoy the digitised collections.
