Reporter: | Tom Callander |
Chair: | Kevin Love |
President: | Rohan Williams |
President Rohan Williams opened the meeting with “welcome to country” and welcome to all.
The Chairperson of the day, Kevin Love, proposed the toast to Rotary International.
The President welcomed our guest speaker Professor Lisa Given, and also Moya an international student from Japan, and Nicholas Oei, here for the second week, an international student studying materials engineering, being mentored by Warwick Cappell.
Birthdays
Kevin Love announced members birthdays:
- Colin Harvey 9 August
- Mary Voice 13 August
- Tom Callander 15 August
- Lynn McBain (spouse of Bruce) 11 August
Guest speaker – Topic: Innovations in Memorialisation; The Melbourne Korean War Memorial Information Creation
Kevin Love introduced our guest speaker Professor Lisa Given, Director of Social Change Enabling Capability Platform, a Canadian who came to Australia in 2011 and has been Melbourne based since 2017. Her background notes are in the last Bulletin. Her research includes social technology in design and how to apply that approach to memorials including war memorials. In this context, her focus at the meeting was the new Korean War Memorial located in Quarry Park Footscray in the City of Maribyrnong. She is involved with community engaged research for social change and is an information behaviour scholar and research methodologist. She investigates the way we come together to seek knowledge and education.
Key enablers for social change involve:
- community engagement into design;
- interdisciplinary human perspectives;
- adoption and innovations.
She pointed to the sustainable development goals wheel (a United Nations concept).
She observed that private memorials and monuments are designed for families and recently have started to include bar codes to tell the story of people.
Public memorials are designed for communities and provide memory, history and commentary (for example The Shrine).
The Melbourne Korean War Memorial was a two year end to end process driven by Professor Blair Kuys, Centre for Innovative Design (Swinburne) with his expertise in history, design, architecture, engineering etc.
The Korean War Memorial was assisted with grants from Korea, the Victorian Government, the Veterans Association, and with the land donated by Maribyrnong City Council. The process started with community in two countries, assisted with a great location in a park, and fieldwork across Australia and Korea. It involved trends in memorial design, materials, texture, visual design, scale etc.
Bringing in the community to be engaged in design embraces community needs. The design also involves site planning and creativity and community input. That process was a 12 month process with many community held events often with 300 plus attendees. Smaller group design workshops took place with key stakeholders. Then large scale imaginings, prototype development, informing the aesthetic. The intent is to account for a combined experience. It addresses questions such as what does this mean for how people interact and what will be the visitors’ experience and how will they be engaged.
The design forces visitors down a path with a flow moving through the Memorial in a particular way to tell the story of the war and its effect on parties. The design includes stone in the middle, bluestone from Melbourne and whitestone (Gapyeong) from Korea.
There is an explicit informing aesthetic:
- personal accounts, quotes, statistics, images, facts etc;
- storytelling as information in design, resonating with veterans, educating visitors and honouring those who served.
There is an implied informing aesthetic:
- navigation features; materials selection, design features etc;
- images formed by 17164 perforations in panels representing the numbers of soldiers from Australia who served in Korea;
- national flowers (hibiscus and golden wattle);
- 6mm anodised aluminium panels chosen as it is not easily vandalised.
There is an embodied informing aesthetic:
- emotive responses, imaginative responses, smell, site, sound, look and feel, height, depth, flow etc;
- smell of flowers;
- view of the Melbourne skyline;
- flow of pathway;
- stones to hold memorial wreath, and ability to place poppies in the panel perforations;
- the city skyline includes Eureka Tower, important because it is the same height as the hill on which one of the battles was fought.
In questions asked by members, our guest speaker confirmed that the Korean War Memorial was not affiliated with the Shrine or other memorials. It is a separate project located at Quarry Park Footscray, sitting on a hill with the responsibility for upkeep undertaken by City of Maribyrnong. A key sponsor is the Veterans Association. It is seen as a national memorial.
Kevin Love thanked our guest speaker for a most interesting presentation on a war memorial for a war relatively forgotten or unknown in the present Australian community.
Announcements
- Neville John thanked the volunteers at the Bunnings barbecue last Sunday which raised $1,110.00.
- Neville also noted that Terry Cocks, our Charter President, had contacted him pointing out the contribution that Judith Durham had made to our Club having attended at a number of meetings and having supported many young people. Neville noted that David Jones was putting together an article for the Club Bulletin about Judith’s involvement with Rotary and our Club.
- Millie Swan reminded members about the Club dinners proposed next Saturday week at restaurants around Melbourne including Ivanhoe, Mordialloc, East Melbourne etc. She requested members to contact other members by phone to urge them to come along with their partners.
- Doug Robertson noted that member dues were now due.
- Tom Callander added to Neville’s comments about Judith Durham and noted that she had particularly been involved in one of our youth projects “Storm the stage” in which we supported young promising performers, and she assisted adjudicating those performers with our Club at the Victorian College of the Arts.
- Tom Callander also reminded members about the Working with Children card requirements and asked them to check their cards to make sure they were yup to date. About two thirds of members have current cards according to Tom’s records. We need to achieve 100%. Cards can be obtained either on line or by a form available at Post Offices. Tom can assist with how these should be completed.