Collections and cultural heritage professional Melanie Horder specialises in significance assessments of cultural heritage collections and archives, with further expertise in the areas of oral history, historical research writing and exhibition curation.
Significance assessment
Significance means the historic, aesthetic, scientific and social values that an object or collection has for past, present and future generations. It refers to the values and meanings that items and collections have for people and communities. Significance helps unlock the potential of collections, creating opportunities for communities to access and enjoy collections, and to understand the history, cultures and environment of Australia. For more information refer to Significance 2.0: a guide to assessing the significance of collections.
Whether your collection or archive is historical or contemporary in nature, Melanie is able to assist by completing a significance assessment report and proposing appropriate management strategies. Organisations can then plan for exhibitions, justify funding requests and address the the conservation and access needs of their collections.
Why do you need a significance assessment?
Significance assessments assist organisations to make informed judgements regarding the current or future management and conservation of their collection material. The in-depth research I undertake whist completing an assessment also explores collection themes which will then inform any subsequent interpretation material or exhibition displays.
Organisations often don’t have the necessary budget to undertake curatorial or preventative conservation projects and turn to granting bodies to obtain the necessary funding. Granting bodies increasingly require a significance assessment to be submitted with the grant application and thus having the report completed by an experienced professional can aid your chances of funding success.
In early 2015 I undertook a significance assessment of the VCA School of Film & Television Archive. The significance assessment highlighted the Archive’s cultural and historical importance and the pressing need for it to be preserved to avoid any further deterioration. The assessment report was then submitted with a grant application to an external funding body to obtain funds to preserve the Archive, which was ultimately successful. The funding acquired was then used to preserve and digitise films within the Archive. The significance assessment thus enabled VCA to obtain the necessary funding to create the VCA School of Film & Television Digital Archive Project. The Project is impressive, showcasing more than 50 years of student filmmaking in a publicly-accessible, ever-growing online collection of Australian film.
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