Safeguarding our cultural heritage

Published on 10 November 2023

The Glenelg Shire Council Cultural Collection is truly one of our region’s treasures, along with the many items collected by other local volunteer organisations that preserve our past for future generations.

There are plenty of mementos from the past – the Cultural Collection itself spans more than 10,000 items.

So how are they all preserved? Recently Council and local volunteer organisations received some expert training in how to do so.

The Glenelg Shire Council Cultural Collection was selected to take part in the Australian Museums and Galleries Victoria (AMAGA VIC) Collections and Community Resilience Program.

This program is a Victorian state-wide initiative led by AMAGA that provides regional communities with the opportunity to digitally preserve their collections and receive onsite training in collections care, preventative conservation and risk mitigation.

The training took place over six days, which was broken up into two separate three-day sessions.

The project also included a half-day intensive workshop on how to store, move and develop storage solutions for a collection.

As well as kickstarting the digitisation of the Glenelg Shire’s Cultural Collection, this project enabled Council to support small collecting organisations from across the Shire, ensuring that they receive professional collections care training, learn the digitisation process and to engage with the peak body for museums and galleries within Australia.

This training has been completely free of charge for organisations to take part in.

Through this project Council and AMAGA have been able to support the Portland Family History Group, The Portland Club, historic Warrock Homestead and Casterton and District Historical Society.

The first week allowed for Portland-based organisations to take part and during the second week the equipment was taken to Casterton.

This project also supported the development and upskilling of two of the casual members of staff from within Council’s Arts and Culture Unit to ensure more resources to take care of the Cultural Collection.

Photo caption: Toyah Horman from Australian Museums and Galleries Association Victoria (second from left) discusses the finer points of photographing historic items with Evelyn Pevitt and Anne Munro of the Casterton Historical Society and Martin Boyer from the Portland Family History Group at a training session at historic Warrock Homestead recently.