Curating a community is not a passive activity. It takes conscious effort, care, and a respect for the people that you are embracing in this community.

But when you bringing together a community with no traditional “place” how can you engage with a place temporarily and make it your own?

This is exactly the work that today’s guest, Imelda Miller, does in her role as the Curator of First Nations Cultures at Queensland Museum Kurilpa. A third generation Vanuatu woman, Imelda is a proud South Sea Islander and responsible for bringing together communities of origin through her work with the museum. Working with material culture an archival collections, Imelda’s collaboration, and curatorial approach, combines cultural practice, community engagement and community lead research and development into her projects.

Hosting exhibitions, running workshops and leading teams in these activities, Imelda is consciously curating places for communities to come together to share their stories and create new ones.

Today’s conversation is one of possibility and Imelda shares so many of her secrets in how she fosters this sense of community, to establish belonging, a sense of connection and storytelling that can be directly applied back to our building our own communities in our workplaces.

In today’s conversation Imelda shares with us;

• How she uses place to create community, even when there is no ownership or relationship to place
• How objects enable people to connect, share stories and develop memory in place
• The fundamentals of curating a community atmosphere are
• The healing power that connection and community can create

Throughout this conversation I hear direct correlations to how I think about fostering community in our workplaces and the role that place plays. Establishing connection, creating belonging, and sharing stories, by communicating social contracts and norms and engaging in routine and ritual.

Imelda is a warm-hearted woman with much wisdom to share on how we can take even a little bit of this approach back to our workplaces.

Mel

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Connect with the Imelda;

You can engage with Imelda’s work here;

https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/discover/exhibitions/plantation-voices

https://www.museum.qld.gov.au/collections-and-research/projects/australian-south-sea-islander-lived-identities

Connect with Mel;

Email Melissa@melissamarsden.com.au

Website melissamarsden.com.au

Website comuniti.com.au

Instagram @melmar

Linkedin Melissa Marsden

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