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The Creating CAM workshops and forum were a wonderful way to share the origin story of Castlemaine Art Museum and boost visitor engagement. CAM was officially founded in 1913, though its back story began in school classrooms during the 1880s, where a small group of girls became life-long friends. In time, these and other like-minded women would become the founding members of a celebrated art museum in the middle of regional Victoria. The predominant colour scheme for the storycloth reflect the origin story's social environment (green, violet and white for women's suffrage) and natural environment (gold for the alluvial deposits that propelled Castlemaine). The nameplates I designed for each of the 'founding mothers' feature wildflowers that are native to Dja Dja Wurrung Country on which Castlemaine is built. Participants designed and created cloth motifs, focusing on individual facts or anecdotes from the origin story that they particularly resonated with and wanted to remember. These motifs were sewn around the nameplates, and all pieced together into one storycloth. The storycloth and accompanying research will be gifted to CAM.
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The below advertisement was originally published by Castlemaine Art Museum and Eventbrite. I include it here as it provides a good summary of the project.
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Workshops | Creating CAM: A herstory in cloth and conversation
Discover the women whose vision and enterprise saw Castlemaine Art Museum grow from its grassroots conception into a celebrated gallery.
When and where
Castlemaine Art Museum
14 Lyttleton Street
Castlemaine
VIC 3450
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About this event
Presented as part of the National Trust's Australian Heritage Festival, you're invited to stitch together the real history of the Castlemaine Art Museum in a hands-on series of story cloth workshops.
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Creating CAM: A herstory in cloth and conversation is a free event comprising four sessions, involving three origin story cloth workshops (part history sharing and conversation, part hand-sewing), alongside a shared storytelling forum event.
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Join CAM Front of House Officer, Sarah Frazer, in threading together the fascinating stories of seven women at the heart of the museum, through hand-sewing and conversation: two essential storytelling mediums that offer continuity between the age of CAM’s inception and today. All the women at the heart of this story created needlework, and one made an income designing embroidery.
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These workshops will continue a long tradition of using stitched cloth as a means of communication, starting with a discussion on how cloth can tell stories of socio-economic statement, political persuasion, history, identity, emotion, and sentiment. Participants will contribute in creating a story cloth together to help unearth the little-known lives of these seven women, all of whom left an enduring legacy on the town of Castlemaine.
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Participants of all ages and abilities are welcome, no sewing experience necessary. Participants only need attend one workshop (though if numbers permit, feel free to attend more). All sewing material provided.
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Numbers are limited. Bookings essential.
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Workshop 1: Wednesday 26 April
Workshop 2: Wednesday 3 May
Workshop 3: Wednesday 10 May
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The fourth session will be a shared storytelling forum that will include an overview of CAM’s herstory origins and explore the story cloth project, in which project participants will be invited to share their insights. The Shared Storytelling Forum is open to all and will be held onsite at Castlemaine Art Museum on 18 May 2023, International Museums Day.
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