Curatorial Compass

Heide Museum of Modern Art, like numerous other museums across the globe, was forced to close down to aid in the reduction of the spread of covid-19. Heide, like many other museums and galleries found the transition to online a steep learning curve. Listen in to this month’s podcast where I chat to Bernadette Alibrando, Heide MoMA’s Public Programs Manager to discover how the Public Programs Team handled the transition to digital media and what they plan to continue post covid-19 as they plan to open their doors on the 30th June 2020.

Transcript

AD – Alexandra Drummond (Interviewer) |BA – Bernadette Alibrando (Heide MoMA Public Programs Manager)

AD: Hi and welcome to the Global Gallery Exploration’s first podcast. Today we have with us Bernadette Alibrando from Heide Museum of Modern Art. She’s a public programs manager, there would you care to share with us some information around what your role is and what it looked like before Covid

BA: Before Covid we would deliver a number of programs. We ran two o’clock tours every day with our volunteer guides, we would then have regular programs so our regular programs would be art babies on a Tuesday morning, Thursday morning we normally have Tai Chi, we also run mini artists, which is for preschoolers, and then normally on a Saturday we would have a workshop, so pre-Covid we were just coming out of I suppose our summer season after Covid I suppose all of that changed.

AD: Yeah. Would you like to share how that changed with us?

BA: I suppose what was tricky was suddenly we had to go online. And Heide doesn’t really have a, I suppose a large digital team. When people come to Heide they experience the landscape, the exhibition space the two houses, you know, there’s 16 acres of land. So, there’s so much to experience at Heide and how do you encapsulate that and put that online? So, we joined forces. So, learning department joined forces with program department, and we decided that we would create a Heide at home page that was our starting platform.

AD: How do you think that you went and what were the sort of the positives that came out of that transition?

BA: Look, it’s been actually, I suppose the first week was a bit hectic of trying to work out exactly how we were going to deliver learning slash public programs online, having resources attached to what we do with the programs, but at the same time, delivering fun programs. I also enjoy programs for not only children, but for adults as well. So we break that down a little bit. And we decided that we would have a challenge every month with the winner announced at the end. So, we launched a drawing challenge and this is all leveraging off our collection. So the idea was to have people connect to our collection, and then being inspired to draw in the style of one of the artists that were given as examples, at the same time offered activities for home that predominantly leveraged off our exhibitions and our collections again, and in which children, students, were able to create a work from home using the templates that we had placed online and then of course, making sure that social media helped us to engage with our wider audience as well as our website page.

AD: My other question around all of that is, is there anything that you are planning to continue offering so obviously with Heide opening up again on the 30th of June, very exciting! What are you sort of thinking that you? Is there anything that you think worked so well that you would like to continue it going forward?

BA: Yes, I think look, we’ve been really fortunate to have a lot of great media around our challenges. So we had drawing challenge, we just finished a clay challenge. And we today we launched a Lego challenge that is leveraging off how sculptures in the sculpture park, it’s been really great to have people of all ages engage in those challenges and participate and allowing people to understand obviously, our collection and a diverse collection that we do have, I mean, the Heide at homepage will continue, it will stay up. So, with our school holiday program, we will most likely put one of the programs up on the Heide at home page. And yes, continuing the challenges would be lots of fun too. So, it’s a nice way to engage with people on a social media level.

AD: Yeah, absolutely, it’s certainly been a very interesting time and it will be interesting to see how not only Heide but other galleries and museums and other institutions will adapt and change going forward. It seems you’ve learned quite a bit. Well, I think we’ll end it there. Thank you so much for your time today, and I look forward to seeing you in Heide real soon!

BA: Thanks.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai