Lebanese and Arab Australian Communities Heritage Project

The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney and the Migration Heritage Centre NSW are working together with the Lebanese and Arab Australian communities to document the oral histories of individuals and families who lived and worked in the Redfern area in the first half of this century.

During the next six months staff from the Powerhouse Museum will meet with people from the Redfern area, a place of early NSW metropolitan settlement for the Lebanese and Arab Australian communities to locate, document and promote the conservation of community cultural heritage in NSW.

The project team plans to use various forms of open and accessible methods of documentation including walking tours with people originally from Redfern, documentation of the original landscape and networking with the local Aboriginal and migrant communities.

Meetings with members of these communities provide the project team with the opportunity to not only document their heritage but also uncover historical and cultural materials such as photographs, documents and family memorabilia. This material together with oral histories will later feature in a future exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum scheduled to open in 2003.

The Lebanese and Arab Australian Communities Heritage Project, one of the first projects to be supported by the NSW Migration Heritage Centre, follows the initial collaboration in 1998 between the Powerhouse Museum and The Department of Communications and the Arts.

This project involved working closely with the Lebanese and Arab Australian communities with a focus on searching for cultural objects within the communities. The project also highlighted the particular needs and visions of the Lebanese and Arab Australian communities but, more importantly, the urgent need to develop an oral history project.

The project will continue the vital work of developing contemporary approaches to migrant cultural heritage in Australia - within a local, regional and international context.

The NSW Migration Heritage Centre was established in October 1998 by the Premier, Minister for the Arts and Minister for Citizenship, The Hon Bob Carr MP. It is an initiative of the Premier's Department, the Ethnic Affairs Commission, and the Ministry for the Arts and the Heritage Office.