Jo Wills (Qld): To explore innovations in museum practice that can inspire and sustain museums in regional Australia
The third in a series of interviews for Australian Rural & Regional News with 2024 Churchill Fellowship recipients whose projects have a rural or regional focus.
Project outline1
This project seeks to explore innovative museum practices in storage, interpretation and engagement that can inspire and inform the sustainability of Australia’s regional and remote museums sector. These innovations include: collaborative storage models, outpost museums and cultural tourism, reinterpreting colonialism and curatorial apprenticeships. It involves visiting museums in regional centres of New Zealand, Canada, Scotland, and England, and attending the 2025 International Council of Museums General Conference “the Future of Museums in Rapidly Changing Communities” in Dubai to explore new ideas and meet other professionals.
ARR.News: What do believe are the main obstacles facing regional Australian museums, and people and communities interested in establishing or maintaining a regional museum?
Jo Wills: After the thrill and momentum of starting a new museum is over, the reality of running a museum can set in. That’s when museums need strong direction and planning, an understanding of their values and core purpose – without that, I think organisations will struggle to remain viable.
The majority of Australia’s regional museums operate on shoestring budgets and compete for limited funding. Usually funding is for infrastructure – operational grant funding is almost non-existent. Those that do employ staff can rarely offer competitive salaries. This means attracting and retaining people with museum training can be difficult. Many organisations are also reliant on volunteers, a wonderful source of labour, but one that has changed considerably over the last ten years and is prone to burnout and/or high turnover. Staffing and skills are a significant challenge – how can trained people be encouraged to work in the regional cultural sector without incentives and appropriate wages?
In many ways, this lack of funding and resources influences the perception of value – and museums are definitely undervalued as social, cultural, community and economic assets. Museum’s ‘value’ image is a major obstacle for investment and recognition. Museum workers are arts workers, but sometimes struggle to get any traction in funding cycles dominated by visual and performing arts. If we stopped to consider the contribution of museums to the cultural production, tourism market, to economic development and to the social wellbeing of those involved in running them, there might perhaps be a very different perception about their value and contribution to society.
Suitable facilities for preserving and/or displaying collections are critical for museum’s ongoing sustainability. Yet many organisations struggle to stay uptodate with maintenance requirements which can be disastrous. Throw in erratic or excessive collecting processes and suddenly there is a storage issue. So there is need for thoughtful and strategic collecting rather than mass acquisition if museums are to remain sustainable.
ARR.News: Have you seen changes in the nature or subject matter of regional museums in Australia? For instance, are museums featuring natural disasters and disaster recovery more common? (I recall some years ago visiting a gripping, small museum in country Victoria telling the story of the Black Saturday fires. Since then there have been the Black Summer fires and the great floods. I feel the floods are still too raw in the memory of some communities as yet.)
Jo Wills: I have been involved in a lot of disaster recovery projects in my role as a Senior Museum Development Officer and worked with many people who have gone through the trauma of events. While there is an increase in the number of disaster events, I’d say there are improvements in local infrastructure and planning for some council/ shire areas, and in museums themselves.
In terms of showcasing the impacts of natural disasters, I think it depends on the community, and it needs to be done with their consent and direction. For. instance, I’ve worked very closely with the team at Babinda Museum to help develop their displays and they were happy to explore the history, past and contemporary, of cyclones that have impacted them. They were thrilled to find an object, and iron sheet roller, that the community purchased almost 100 years ago and put it their displays to show the importance of community investment in recovery. But I’ve also worked in places where the emotion and loss associated with an event is too difficult to address at this time. It’s enough to get through and over the event, and then the workforce is usually so exhausted that reliving it is hard. Cardwell District Historical Society did some great work in the aftermath of Cyclone Yasi in terms of small displays, and an oral history project. But it took time and it’s by no means straightforward.
Other emerging topics include truth telling, and the impact of missions in FNQ. Mapoon Cultural Centre and Gab Titui Cultural Centre on Thursday Island are leaders in this area in FNQ. In Cooktown, Port Douglas and Low Isles, conservation and environment are important topics and i think will increasingly be explored with the changing climate and loss of habitat.
ARR.News: Do you believe that the tourism industry and museums in regional Australia could work together more effectively?
Jo Wills: I do. There is strong potential for partnerships to be developed between tourism bodies and local councils. I think there is also a need for a more nuanced understanding of what museums need to operate and run successfully by the tourism industry, and a focus on the quality of the product that’s being offered. To develop and then run destination museums needs long term investment and planning – and a recognition of the value that cultural assets like museums bring to the tourism economy.
In some regional towns there is investment in visitor information centres, which is great, but museums are a bit more than just that. So there needs to be a clear understanding of the product, audience and it’s sustainability – rather than just museums developing the content and tourism industry taking care of the advertising. There are examples around the region in FNQ where visitor information centres have integrated museums into their business and made this work successfully, such as Mareeba Heritage Centre and Herberton Mining Museum and Vic. Somewhere like Port Douglas, however, has incredible potential to develop an innovative and engaging museums that can deliver benefits to both the community and the tourism sector.
There are also opportunities for local businesses to work collaboratively with museums to create cultural dimensions to their businesses – so I see the potential as being far greater than just the museum itself.
About Jo Wills
Jo Wills is an experienced museum worker who is passionate about helping museums in regional and remote communities. She seeks to inspire volunteers, First Nation’s communities, and other cultural sector workers to deliver inclusive projects that build capacity, celebrate culture and history, respect the environment, and which create a lasting impact for those involved in developing them.
Based in Cairns in Far North Queensland, Jo travels throughout the region to identify key needs and challenges facing museums, keeping places and the people who work in them. She currently works as a Senior Museum Development Officer as part the Museum Development Program at Queensland Museum. In this role she uses her strong community engagement skills to advocate for and deliver best practice museum management, curatorial skills, disaster recovery and training across the sector.
Jo undertook her PhD in museum studies and community engagement to pursue her interests in environmental history, identity, and storytelling. It was part of an ARC Linkage Project with the National Museum of Australia and the Murray Darling Basin Commission and undertaken through the University of Tasmania. She has since worked on a variety of projects as a lecturer, heritage officer and curator, and was a staff member on the Deakin University team that won the International Council of Museums Award (Australia) for International Relations for training Buddhist monks in Lampang Thailand.
Jo’s work in regional Queensland has resulted in revitalised museums, creative exhibitions, strategic development, engaged volunteers, and community disaster recovery. In 2023, a five-year work program to create a new museum in Babinda resulted in the project, community and Jo being recognised with awards at the Museum and Galleries Queensland State Awards
Reference
1. https://www.churchilltrust.com.au/project/to-explore-innovations-in-museum-practice-that-can-inspire-and-sustain-museums-in-regional-australia/
Related stories: 2024 Churchill Fellowship recipient: Dean Gilligan, 2024 Churchill Fellowship recipient: Kelly Lees, 2024 Churchill Fellowship recipient: Henry Tan
