Thursday 17 July 2014

NETWORKING TASMANIAN MUSINGPLACES


Tasmania is home to a largely untapped cultural resource, its musingplaces -- its public heritage and cultural collections, museums, art galleries, historic houses, gardens and parklands and more generally its cultural landscapes and natural environments. 

Noticeably, all the public institutions are under administrations and managements that have variable interconnectedness, limited marketing strategies and uneven functionality as 21st C musingplaces.

Recent research at the nudgelbah Institute suggests that Tasmania's musingplaces have huge potential to deliver spectacular cultural, social and fiscal dividends – directly and indirectly and via tourism if these musingplaces were to be networked

The Director of the nudgelbah Institute, Ray Norman [1], commented, "Tasmania's musingplaces have the potential to be networked and operated cooperatively and collaboratively in a Tasmanian cultural tourism context." [7]

"​Tasmania’s musingplaces, and the stories embedded in them, and their collections, offer extraordinary research opportunities for cultural researchers," Ray observed.  “Of considerable interest are the Communities of Ownership and Interest (COI) [2][3] attached to these places." He said.

Just posing the question, "Does place determine culture or does culture define placedness?", opens the possibilities for a treasure trove of Tasmanian stories coming to light and life – thus adding value to musingplaces.

Tasmania shares many characteristics with Scotland. 2014 is Scotland's Homecoming Year [4]. Prof. Bill Boyd [5], the nudgelbah Institute's  Research Coordinator, is currently on his way to Scotland to research ‘Scottish placedness’. 

Professor Boyd commented: "I will be exploring my research interests in the diversity of Scottish musingplaces and re-exploring 'home' in the context of my cultural identity research."[8]

"Scotland is an great example of where ‘placedness’ [6] is enthusiastically celebrated," Professor Boyd said. "There are members of Scottish Communities of Ownership and Interest sprinkled all over the world." 

Cultural tourism accounts for the most significant part of Scotland’s tourism.

The nudgelbah Institute believes that Tasmania could learn from Scotland, and how it is using its musingplaces to develop its cultural assets in ways that contribute to local cultural development and tourism in tandem.

However, Tasmania has an advantage in that there are incentives now to: 


  1. Network the governance, management and marketing of the State’s musingplaces in innovative 21st C ways – and especially so via digital technologies;
  2. Develop and adopt networked but standalone entrepreneurial operational model/s for Tasmanian musingplaces; 
  3. Proactively engage with Communities of Ownership and Interest to ensure inclusive and 21st C style innovative entrepreneurial programming is developed and adopted; and
  4. Do so over a structured three to five year timeframe with the active participation of the various musingplaces' Communities of Ownership and Interest.
–––– END ––––

FOR MORE INFORMATION
  • eMAIL: Ray Norman – raynorman@eftel.net.au 
  • eMAIL: Prof. Bill Boyd – William.Boyd@scu.edu.au – Currently on fieldwork, Scotland & Europe
  • Click Here: Discussion regarding Communities of Ownership & Interest
  • Click Here: A series of discussions to do with networking musingplaces
  • Click on the Hyperlinks above and indicated thus [number]

1 comment:

nudgelbah said...

Starting to build a Musingplace COI list from The Tamar here are a few:
• Ratepayers Association Tasmania
• Launceston Historical Society
• Heritage Protection Society
• Tasmanian Family History Society
• West Tamar Historical Society
• George Town and Districts Historical Society
• Heritage Tasmania
• Professional Historians Association (Tasmania)
• Cultural Heritage Practitioners (Tas), to mention just a few organisations ... Anyone got some to add