A group of Moree people involved in collecting and preserving historical items had the opportunity to participate in preservation and conservation workshops at Bank Art Museum Moree (BAMM) last week.
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Assistant Director of Preservation Australia Tegan Anthes ran the preservation and conservation workshops from Monday, March 18 until Friday, March 22.
The program was completed through the National Library of Australia's Community Heritage Grants program, providing five full days of workshops free of charge to collecting organisations in Moree whose collections are locally owned and publicly accessible.
The workshops received great interest from local organisations with a total of sixteen participants attending from BAMM, Dhiiyaan Aboriginal Centre, Moree Community Library, and Moree and District Historical Society.
BAMM collections and exhibitions officer Kate Tuart said that she was thrilled with the level of attendance.
"The grant provided the funds, and the workshop provided local staff with an opportunity to learn from a highly skilled conservator," she said.
"Building these invaluable skill sets within the community is vital to ensuring our locally and nationally significance collections are available to the public for a long time to come."
Skill development focused on the areas of Collection Care, Paper and Photograph Conservation, and Disaster Planning and Recovery.
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Participants received hands on experience in collection management, best practice environmental conditions, policy writing, identifying photographic processes, basic paper repairs, and collection recovery from water damage. This included site visits to Bank Art Museum Moree and the Moree and District Historical Society's collection, currently housed at the Moree Community Library.
"We can digitise books and photographs, but the beauty is in the preservation of the original item," Raquel Clarke from the Dhiiyaan Aboriginal Centre said.
"We were shown how to slow down the deterioration process and prolong the life of these significant items. It was valuable to work with BAMM, the Historical Society and the Library as we recognise our responsibility to conserve for our future generations."
