Taking the message beyond the walls
‘Taking the Message Beyond the Walls’ was originally published in the proceedings of the national conference of ARAZPA (Australasian Regional Association of Zoological Parks and Aquaria) and ASZK (Australian Society of Zoo Keeping) in Alice Springs Desert Park, NT 21-26 March 1999.
The concept of outreach is embedded in Community Education programs of the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney. Programs including RBG goes West, Arbor Day and Wollemi Pine – A Dinosaur Tree service the needs of even the most isolated communities of NSW. This paper examines these programs in terms of their purpose, target audience, funding and evaluation and relevance to the Gardens’ Corporate Plan.
Janelle Hatherly 2021
Introduction
Over the past three years the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney (RBG) has re-examined the role of botanic gardens and changed its corporate mission from a scientifically-focused one to one that is more relevant to all facets of the community. As a result, we no longer see our work as just increasing knowledge, managing collections and carrying out research, but see a role for ourselves as service providers managing open spaces and tailoring programs to meet the needs of our users. Like other State Government institutions, the RBG has a mandate to serve the entire New South Wales public, not just those residents and tourists near our gardens who can personally visit.
Our collections remain important for scientific research and for conservation of species but it is our public who will help ensure that we continue to receive funding and support for these purposes. It is also a well-informed public that can make social changes for a sustainable future. For the botanic gardens to be of service, effort needs to be made to take the Gardens’ services out to where the people live. Outreach programs are the means by which we can promote our scientific research and take conservation messages ‘beyond the garden walls’.
Outreach programs constitute a significant part of the services provided by the Gardens’ Community Education Unit. They are a logical and planned extension of those onsite programs that operate efficiently, provide practical experiences and has proven content and teaching techniques. Collectively, our onsite and outreach programs go a long way towards achieving our corporate mission and the goals set by international strategies for biodiversity conservation and sustainability.
Outreach programs provide an excellent opportunity for Gardens’ staff to interact face-to-face with local residents in their local area. By taking place where the people live, local environmental issues can be addressed and resolved and attitudes and behaviour can be modified to promote lifestyles compatible with the sustainable and equitable use of resources. Community links can be built up, and people come to realise that botanic gardens are interesting, involving and relevant to them. By devolving to as local a scale as possible we become an accepted part of the community rather than being perceived as irrelevant institutions separate from daily life.
However, special strategies are required if outreach programs are to be effective and successful. In the case of the public who visit our gardens, market research gives us a good understanding of their demographics, reasons for visiting and even some of their attitudes and values. But the community ‘outside the walls’ is a public of different cultures, beliefs, ages and educational backgrounds and this presents us with greater challenges. How then does an organisation like a botanic garden go out into the big wide world and promote appreciation, understanding and knowledge of plants, their conservation and importance to the population at large?
Attendance at shows such as agricultural field days and university open days provides a good advertising opportunity but, in addition, a program delivered to schools allows effective learning to take place throughout the community.
Schools sit at the centre of community life, both physically and socially. Children discuss their day with members of their family, teachers socialise with other adults and many parents and citizens are involved with school activities and committees. In a small country town, a well-planned outreach program can reach a significant proportion of the whole community. School programs can also be particularly effective because the target audience is clearly defined and the programs can be tied into well-established curriculum frameworks.
RBG goes West – a statewide outreach program
A successful outreach program conducted by the Community Education Unit of the RBG is RBG goes West. It takes information, real materials and garden experiences to schools and communities in isolated parts of NSW. The program, begun in the eighties, has been running annually since 1992 and has involved over 2000 students in 118 schools and their associated communities. The areas visited are often sparsely populated with the bigger towns sometimes hundreds of kilometres apart; the schools are typically run by one or two teachers and have enrolments from eight to 50 children.
RBG goes West gives students the opportunity to interact with a variety of live and preserved plant material that they would otherwise not experience and to develop an interest in plants of their own. Together we investigate their local environment and provide them with opportunities to present their own points of view. By setting up a two-way transfer of knowledge and skills the children are empowered to act in a positive way for their environment. They discuss the environmental impact of personal decisions, learn about the links between natural and human systems and obtain horticultural advice and practical assistance.
At the same time the program offers teachers in-service opportunities and practical advice relating to plants and horticultural issues in their own school grounds. It also reinforces to teachers the significance of environmental education and the care of the land.
After school or on weekends the Gardens’ staff hold gardening clinics for the broader community and, if requested, assist with ecological restoration and regeneration projects or planning for local parks. Publicity for RBG goes West, particularly in country areas, is always positive with local radio stations keen to interview participants. The verbal and written evaluations we receive also give encouraging support and constructive feedback.
Outreach programs are particularly successful if communities are regarded as a resource as well as a target for education. Locals can educate Gardens’ staff about their familiar surroundings – they can explain variations in local species, effects of weather patterns and unusual plant-animal interactions. They can inform about indigenous plant knowledge. For example, at Weilmoringle, a particularly isolated region, the local Aboriginal community took our Community Education staff on an extensive bush tour to demonstrate their use of plants for food and medicine.
Although this kind of outreach service is labour intensive and expensive to mount, the senior executive of the RBG and sponsors have been extremely supportive. To date, the program has been funded by the RBG, small commercial sponsorships, grants from the New South Wales Department of Education Country Areas Program, and a generous grant from the New South Wales Environmental Trust.
Programs for the metropolitan area
Many of the schools in the metropolitan area find it difficult to visit the Gardens because of the still significant distances involved, lack of transport or financial constraints. For them, we run shorter versions of our RBG goes West program and take along the newly discovered Wollemi Pine to bring a ‘wow’ factor to our messages about biodiversity and habitat conservation. To take full advantage of this wonderful marketing tool we have developed a one hour long Wollemi Pine – A Dinosaur Tree travelling slide show. An education officer presents a commentary appropriate to the age level, and ensures that questions and student interactions form an integral part. We have toured Wollemi Pine – A Dinosaur Tree extensively around Western Sydney and have taken on board feedback received in verbal and written evaluations. We have refined the program to the point where it is deliverable to a wide cross-section of the community.
Closer to home in the inner city, the RBG sees a need to reach out to serve the local urban community. There has been, in recent times, a great reduction in many people’s day-to-day contact with nature, particularly in the young. A major concern is how few children are growing up incorporating plants, animals and natural places into their sense of home. Children by nature are curious and interested in the world around them. If, in these early years, they have regular opportunities to experience plants, gardens, gardening or other components of the natural world in a positive enjoyable way then, as adults, they are likely to garden for pleasure and develop a genuine concern for the environment and show responsible environmental behaviour. By creating green spaces in school grounds many children come to appreciate that the environment is here with them and not somewhere else.
To this end the RBG has set up an annual outreach Arbor Day program with local inner city schools. Once again, the strategy is to work initially with an identified audience tying the Gardens’ messages into established educational curricula and a particular school’s interests and needs. About six weeks before Arbor Day our horticultural staff and the Principal of the school work out the garden design and select plants suitable for the area and for appropriate learning purposes.
First year RBG horticultural apprentices do most of the landscaping and benefit from managing the project through from start to finish. The Gardens’ education staff liaise with teachers to arrange a pre-activity and assist with the day’s organisation. On the morning of Arbor Day, the last Monday in July, every child and teacher plants a small tree or shrub as part of the new landscaping. School assistants are then invited to attend one of the school garden maintenance workshops run regularly at the Gardens and our education horticulturists keep in contact with the students, staff and local community to help set up and provide practical advice to school garden clubs.
As well as targeting one inner city school each year in this way, we are now exploring how to help many school communities establish garden clubs and communal gardens. Greening programs, where botanic gardens work with local communities to turn urban wastelands into green oases, have been particularly successful in New York City, USA and Capetown, South Africa.
Linking up with audiences in similar interstate institutions
The Wollemi Pine is a national treasure which should be experienced by all Australians. Currently there is only one on public display in the Royal Botanic Garden in the centre of Sydney and one in Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in England. It may be some time before each of the major botanic gardens will have a Pine of their own for display and interpretation.
Meanwhile its discovery excites and enthuses people to find out more – about the plant, its rarity and the need for its conservation. Botanic gardens have an interested and easily accessible audience in their staff, Friends, volunteers and visitors. Our Wollemi Pine – A Dinosaur Tree program for NSW schools and communities is ideally suited for developing for touring interstate.
As with RBG goes West we sought additional sponsorship for Wollemi Pine – A Dinosaur Tree and in December 1998 were successful in obtaining a Visions of Australia grant from the Commonwealth Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts to tour our interactive presentation to the seven other State and Territory botanic gardens.
Wollemi Pine – A Dinosaur Tree will tour between March and November this year and each of the venues has selected dates that will enable them to tie it in with their own educational activities (e.g. Royal Tasmanian Botanic Gardens’ Endangered Species Program) and special events (e.g. Australian National Botanic Gardens’ Science Festival in Canberra and World Environment Week at the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne). Educational support material on the Wollemi Pine and conservation of biodiversity is to be left with each venue for reproduction and distribution to school groups and the general community.
An additional benefit of this program is the face-to-face networking that will happen between our staff and other major botanic gardens’ educators. Information about programs, resources, skills and ideas can be exchanged and shared. The tour also raises the overall profile of community education staff within each organisation.
An international perspective
Having discussed taking our messages beyond the walls to the local community, around NSW and Australia, the potential for a cultural institution to have an international impact needs to be considered.
Electronic mail has facilitated professional networking locally, nationally and internationally and the new media technologies provide people with greater access to institutional expertise and collections as never before. The internet is the door through which agencies can become relevant to literally millions of people. The challenge is to develop websites that are something more than just promotional electronic brochures.
Opportunities for content-rich sites and interactive learning exist but it is not enough to simply load data into standard website packages. A team contributing graphic design skills, sound learning principles and expertise in information technology needs to be brought together if a truly interactive website is to be developed and used successfully by a huge audience.
Regarded as having a website in the top 5% of Australian sites accessed, the Australian Museum registers around 30,000 users every month equating to as many as 600,000 hits. This number greatly exceeds gallery visitations and with over 50% of its users logging in from the United States, it can truly boast a global audience. The Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney is well on the way to refining its website and establishing PlantNet, a user-friendly database documenting the distribution and conservation status of NSW flora. Compact discs (CDs) also enable interactive learning to be packaged and distributed relatively inexpensively. The personal computer is becoming more commonplace and virtual tours of collections can be developed for distribution to schools and libraries. The CDs can be used in an introduction to a planned excursion to a zoo, botanic garden or similar cultural institution or add value to a completed visit. Educational research has shown that learning is enhanced if pre-visit familiarisation and post-visit consolidation of this kind occurs.
Conclusion
Schools are a central community resource and education units in cultural institutions are well-placed to deliver messages to the community at large through outreach programs. For the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney, raising community awareness of the importance of plants and the need for their conservation is the message at the heart of its corporate mission. The programs described in this paper are just some of the ways the message can be taken beyond the walls. The possibilities are limitless provided the principles of outreach are firmly embedded in the corporate mission and strategic planning processes. Only in this way can commitment of organisational resources and funding be guaranteed.
References
Anderson, D. 1997, A Common Wealth: Museums and learning in the United Kingdom, A Report to the Dept of National Heritage.
Berglund, N. 1994, Go West! Roots 9, Botanic Gardens Conservation International Newsletter, Kew
Botanic Gardens Conservation International, 1994. Environmental Education in Botanic Gardens – Guidelines for developing individual strategies. Kew
Foster, J. 1997, Networking for education. Conservation into the 21st century. Proceedings of the 4th International Botanic Gardens Conservation Congress. P335-338
Morgan, G. 1999, Muse February-March 99 Newsletter of the Australian Museum Society. P4-5
© Janelle Hatherly
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