Biennial General Meeting, 7 February 2014

Membership

Priscilla Gaff (Acting President)
Andrew Hiskens (Immediate Past-President – from August 2013)
Peter Hoban (Treasurer)
Paula Lindley (Secretary)
Christine Healey
Ian Watts
Patrick Watt
Donna Livermore
Melissa Bedford (from October 2013)
Silvia Ercole (from December 2013)

Comments

As a volunteer-run group, ENVi is reliant on committee members’ enthusiasm and rare spare time to do pretty much everything it does. But one of the benefits of having a Biennial General Meeting (as opposed to Annual), is that it is easier to discern changes and developments over a longer period.

While the pattern of ENVi’s programs has remained very consistent – with Traveller’s Tales and Peep Show events repeating each year – other tools for engagement with the broader community of museum educators in Victoria have been put in place. A key new platform for engagement has been the ENVi website/blog (https://maenvi.wordpress.com/) developed by Christine Healey, alongside a Twitter account and other forms of social media. At the time of writing there are over 100 people subscribed to the site – which is a good number given the size of the museum educator community – although we could always do better…

One of the other recent developments was with the Museums Australia Education National Network. In 2012/13, the MAENN Committee approached ENVi with a view to some of our committee members taking on the key committee roles in MAENN in 2013/14, as part of a broader strategy to move the key committee roles from state to state over time. After quite a lot of discussion, this was agreed and, at the MAENN AGM in May, Andrew Hiskens was elected President, Peter Hoban Treasurer and Christine Healey Secretary of the national group.

In order to accommodate this, Andrew stepped down as President of ENVi, and Priscilla Gaff became the Acting President, pending voting on new ENVi Committee roles at this BGM.

This is looking to be a good move for MAENN (which has now been renamed more simply Museums Australia Education), because some of the lessons learned from ENVi, are being able to be applied nationally – especially around online communication. And it is also strengthening ENVi, by encouraging changes in committee roles and bringing new people onto the Committee.

Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to thank the Committee, both collectively and individually for their efforts over the past two years. We are an active Committee (within the constraints of our ‘day jobs’) and everyone has contributed to the development and management of the programs we have offered. The Committee meets bi-monthly, so there have been 14 or so meetings over that time.

We would particularly like to thank Peter Hoban, who is stepping down from his roles as Treasurer, after many years of service. And also Christine Healey, for her work on ENVi’s web and social media presence. And Donna Livermore, for her work, particularly on i-Animal night, and hope that even though she is standing down from the committee that we may see her at future ENVI events.

The Committee is always keen to co-opt new members, partially because new ideas and fresh enthusiasm are always good, but also because we want to maintain a broad reach into the museum education sector in Victoria. So we were very pleased to welcome Melissa Bedford and Silvia Ercole onto the Committee in late 2013.

We would also like to acknowledge the support of Museums Australia (Victoria), particularly in the management of bookings for our events, as well as collaboration on events – such as this one tonight.

Programs

2012

BGM & Love and Devotion Exhibition held at the State Library of Victoria;
International Museums Day at the Old Melbourne Goal;
The Wonders of Mesopotamia at Melbourne Museum;
Shifting the Lens, Reading Pictures at National Gallery of Victoria.
Travellers Tales at Museo Italiano

2013

Raising the Bar: programming for adults in museums, held at the State Library of Victoria;
i-Animal at Melbourne Zoo;
Ancient Afghanistan and the melting pot of programming at Melbourne Museum;
Monet’s Garden at NGV;
Post Conference Talks at Old Treasury Building;
Travellers’ Tales at the Chinese Museum

Andrew Hiskens and Priscilla Gaff
6 February, 2014