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Paper 1

STL Paper 2

Seventeen Ways to Share Their Legacy: Project Model

By Amanda James, Community History Officer, History Trust of South Australia.

In 2001 the History Trust, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and seventeen local museums and historical societies in South Australia collaborated in an innovative war heritage project called Sharing Their Legacy.  The seventeen museums and historical societies were given the brief of producing a small display about any aspect of their community’s war heritage.  Organisations with a wide range of experience and skill levels took part in the project.

For a collaborative project of a type not previously undertaken in South Australia ‘war heritage’ was a deliberate choice of theme.  Besides the advantage of accessing funding from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the experience of war has affected just about every community at some time.  The central theme of war heritage, along with the collaborative nature of the project, gave the participating groups a focus and the impetus for their research and display projects.  A central theme meant that historical groups that may otherwise have no reason to network with each other were brought together.  Also, there was something extraordinarily motivational for the participants in being involved in a statewide project – it gave their individual projects some status and encouraged them to work to a higher standard of research and presentation. 

The large number of participants ensured a high degree of individuality in the projects, because in order to come up with something unique, the participant groups found it necessary to restrict their projects to a very local focus.  This provided the justification to tell their personal local stories – stories that may get lost in the big picture of war heritage and yet are an integral part of that history.  It is all too easy for the individual to fade into national war memory, but local history is often about individuals, and so is uniquely placed to address this.  And, because it is local history, it is involving, engaging and extremely relevant to the local community that contributes to it, sees it, uses it, and responds to it.  When viewed as a whole the stories in Sharing Their Legacy clearly show that war heritage has many different perspectives and meanings.

The Model of Sharing Their Legacy

The Sharing Their Legacy project was characterised by four main elements;

1. A common theme, with each participant working on an individual project

2. The collaborative nature of the project and opportunities for networking between participants

3. Centralised coordination of the project, and

4. Ongoing advice and assistance and the provision of training as required

The seventeen participating organisations were located across South Australia – eight were in the region of Adelaide while the remainder were spread throughout South Australia.  The individual projects were small and the emphasis was on local content.  The way the project was carried out reflects the diversity of participants and their geographical spread and provides a model for future collaborative projects.

Two forums were held during the course of the project, one at commencement and one about six months in.  This enabled participants to share ideas, solve problems and allowed the History Trust to measure the overall progress of the project.

Ongoing curatorial assistance was provided by the History Trust and design assistance was organised through the University of South Australia.

Field visits to assist with curatorial and design aspects of the projects were made to each participating organisation.  Regular contact was made via the telephone to give advice, assistance and encouragement.  A regular project newsletter kept participants up to date with each other’s projects and ensured that procedural information about Sharing Their Legacy, such as correct acknowledgements, was distributed to each group at the one time.

Central coordination enabled the project to be kept on track.  Things such as design assistance were organised by the History Trust allowing participants to tap into resources that individually they may not have been able to source and / or afford.  Quite often groups were able to point each other in the direction of information they needed or share some particular knowledge that they had of war heritage.

Specialised assistance and training was important because with a large number of groups involved the strengths and weaknesses of each quickly became apparent.  Specific assistance could be targeted to groups as required.  This may not have been economically viable if the projects had been done as equivalent individual projects.  Also training, such as the design workshops that most groups chose to take part in, as well as skills and knowledge learned through accessing curatorial assistance, have benefits far exceeding the life of the project. 

So what are the ramifications of the Sharing Their Legacy model for community history? 

• The local focus, small budget, and focus on research combined to put the emphasis on unearthing new local history information.
• The collaborative nature of the project encouraged participants to consider the individual stories they could contribute. This resulted in stories that were both unique and important to the national history.  Local fundraising activity, for example, undoubtedly contributed a great deal to both local communities’ and the nation’s overall war effort.
• Networking and collaboration between participants created common ground between previously unrelated groups and provided a broader forum than is usually available to local historical groups.
• Flexibility within the project made it very responsive to the strengths and weaknesses of each participant group and differing levels of experience and skills.  It provided direction and a useful training ground for participants.
• Using a common theme raised the profile of that subject, encouraged local historical groups to pursue it, and facilitated access to an outside funding partner.

Sharing Their Legacy sparked tremendous community interest in a topic that most people probably didn’t think they were interested in.  It was a way of focusing attention on the local museum or historical society and resulted in exceptional outcomes including conservation of significant material, knowledge and local understanding of war heritage and a family reunion!  New research and artefacts added to museum and historical society collections as a result of Sharing Their Legacy, have added much to the development of the historical record.  Also, for some participants Sharing Their Legacy has acted as a springboard, prompting more intensive and longer-term research to become ongoing.

A collaborative project gives participants confidence and a foundation on which to model their next project.  Skills learned are central to community history and museum development.  Collaboration sets new standards for participants.  It raises their expectations of what they can do and gets new people in the community involved.

The People's Voice