Our first organised event was an Archiving Basics Workshop on 27 March, 2025. 15 members of the community came for a fascinating morning learning the fundamentals of how to look after their documents and objects with Erika Taylor, curator at Tweed Museum, and conservator Nadia McDougal These become precious museum objects to be treating with respect when they come into our care at Aquarius Archives Centre.
A follow up proposal is for a workshop to create some of the equipment necessary to work with and store archives.
Workshops in the pipeline include “metadata”, or how we manage all of the information attached to records and objects to enable access not only to the items themselves, but to the stories about them.
Much of this information about the object will be recorded digitally, so of course another workshop about digitisation is proposed when the time comes. For the moment, Museums & Galleries NSW has developed excellent standards and guidance for digitising, Crystal Clear.
A workshop about oral history will come later, when we find people (you?) to step up with the energy to manage the recording of oral histories and the ways in which they are to be shared.
Creative workshops are proposed as a way to co-create together in the rich tradition of the Aquarius Festival, and now Nimbin, as a living work of art.