Author: jacintagregs

Flashback Friday: Future Park

Jacinta reflects back on the popular and colourful Team Lab: Future Park exhibition

In the spirit of ‘Flashback’ Friday, I wanted to reflect on one of my favourite exhibition’s in the Powerhouse museum’s history Team lab presents: Future Park.

In the eight years I’ve been an employee with MAAS, this has been one of the most popular exhibitions I’ve ever seen! Lines out the door and around the corner of the building, this exhibition presented an exciting opportunity for children to learn in an artistic space that emphasized creativity, and interaction with your own landscape.

You could colour in animals, buildings, people, which would then appear on walls, floors, furniture which you could then interactive with even further! Children loved it but adults did too, including myself. By the end of the exhibition, I was an expert colour-inner, developing a kind of mosaic artistic style of the things I coloured in.

I loved this exhibition and how spectacularly it engaged with the public, and had a lot of fun in my time working in it as a Visitor Services Officer.

Creativity and Collaboration in Lockdown

Find out how volunteers and members of the Visitor Services team have collaborated to create objects accessible through digital recordings during lockdown

Over the lockdown period, it was amazing and inspiring to see the way staff worked together to create digital content, while visitors weren’t able to enjoy the objects on-site.

Visitor Services Officers began to provide narration work to volunteers who weren’t confident narrating their own pieces, and it crested some truly spectacular and informative podcast recordings!

Boot warmer, earthenware, made by Doulton & Co, Burslem, England, 1891-1902
Boot warmer, earthenware, made by Doulton & Co, Burslem, England, 1891-1902

Researched and written by MDC Volunteer Lesley, and narrated by Visitor Services Officer Victoria, this podcast Early foot and boot warmers was a fantastic look into boot warmers that were used to deal with brutal English cold weather in the 17th century. 

Victoria does an excellent job at describing what Lesley writes as “insulation being unheard of”, and providing an almost Dickensian picture of what winter must have been like.

Victa 'peach-tin prototype' lawn mower, power rotary, with a two-stroke Villiers petrol engine
Victa ‘peach-tin prototype’ lawn mower, power rotary, with a two-stroke Villiers petrol engine, metal, designed and made by Mervyn Victor Richardson, Concord, New South Wales, Australia, 1952.

Another excellent podcast recording that was a collaborative effort was this wonderful recording on Lawnmowers, and how we came to use the lawnmowers we have today. This was researched by MDC volunteer Paul, and narrated by Visitor Services Officer, Saul. I didn’t even know you could be a lawnmower expert! 

It’s amazing how in times of trial, staff at the Powerhouse museum were able to work together to create these podcast episodes, and I’m very proud to have been part of the effort in creating them, well done to everyone involved!