Wodonga Council wanted to expand the existing Bonegilla Migrant Experience permanent exhibition enabling ex-residents and their descendants an opportunity to self-curate and deliver their own insights and stories directly to visitors to the site.
Commissioned by the client to design, curate and implement the exhibition, Convergence Design engaged Art of Multimedia for the digital components.
Given that the memories relating to Bonegilla are still relatively accessible, the use of resident stories and identity cards within a national heritage site permit a level of collective memory and personal interpretation that is not commonly associated with or located within a regional national heritage site.
Winner for Permanent Exhibition & Gallery Fit-out
2023 MAGNA Award
Highly commended – Medium Project of the Year
2023 AMaGA Vic Award
AOM role in the collaboration was to:
- Produce several oral histories of diverse ex-residents who share their experience of Bonegilla via videos displayed on a large screen.
- Design and develop a microsite to house over 300,000 digitised ID Card records and make them accessible online. The microsite includes capacity for further expansion of the collection through community contributed stories with photos and even video.
- Develop an interactive kiosk version of the ID Cards database for access in the exhibition.
- Develop a ‘Make your ID Card’ interactive exhibit, which allows the visitor to take their photo and create their own ID card, which they can then share with their social circles
The exhibition was received with enthusiasm by the community at the 75th anniversary commemorative event and was Winner of the 2023 MAGNA Award for a Permanent Exhibition or Gallery Fit-out and Highly commended in the Medium Project of the Year category of AMaGA Vic Awards 2023.
We invite you to visit Bonegilla Migrant Centre and in the meantime, you can view the Identity Card Microsite here https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/
