Who’s involved

Migration Heritage Centre
NSW Heritage Office
Communities, heritage and cultural professionals
Local government representatives in Albury, Broken Hill and Orange

When and where

Project location: Statewide
Project status: Completed project
Date of completion: April 2002

Project description

The Migration Heritage Toolkit has been developed as a result of workshops with migrant communities in Albury, Broken Hill and Orange. The toolkit contains a set of guidelines and a package of resources. They have been designed to enable people from the heritage or cultural networks and migrant communities to work together and develop skills to preserve and share the items, places, stories and experiences of importance to those communities – according to their own cultural perspectives.

The toolkit is suitable for use by a range of organisations and individuals, including local councils, migrant communities, heritage advisers, community and neighbourhood centres, social planners, historians, local and regional museums and galleries, historical and heritage societies, and local and regional libraries.

It is hoped that the toolkit will spur activity beyond the workshops. Project outcomes outlined in the toolkit include:

• publishing experiences on the MHC website;
• forming a local migration heritage working group;
• archiving or broadcasting oral histories through local libraries or radio stations;
• developing an exhibition with a local museum or gallery;
• developing a history project with a local historical society; and
• making detailed photographic records of migration heritage places and items for lodgement at the local library.

What has the project achieved?

The project was developed to redress an imbalance in the preservation and promotion of migration heritage in the formal heritage and cultural systems. It was also developed to equip communities with the knowledge, networks and skills to identify, recognise, value, document and protect their migration heritage. Through consultations with three communities in regional NSW, the project has created a major resource to assist migrant communities and people from the heritage and cultural networks to work together to achieve this.

The toolkit has been developed to encourage sustainable, culturally diverse, community driven heritage practices. It is intended to assist the formation of new partnerships between migrant communities, heritage groups, government and non-government organisations – and, through these activities, raise the profile of migration heritage in the State.

Project contact

John Petersen – Manager
Migration Heritage Centre

Phone +61 2 9217 0625
Fax +61 2 9217 0628

Email johnp@phm.gov.au

Address:
PO Box K346
HAYMARKET NSW 1238

Website
www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au