Lightning Ridge Opal and Fossil Centre project manager Jenni Brammel

Thursday, 21 October 2004

The Lightning Ridge Opal and Fossil Centre Committee held a public forum last week to give the Lightning Ridge community a chance to have some input into the proposed centre.

Around 20 community members attended the forum and gave their opinions on what they would like to see in the centre.

After hearing a brief outline of the plans for the centre from project manager Jenni Brammell, the participants split up into three groups and brainstormed ideas about what to include in the centre.

"We felt it was a really positive meeting and people had a lot of fun workshops and came up with some fantastic ideas.

"We wrote down absolutely everything that anyone said which ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous, but it got everyone thinking and we came up with all sorts of good ideas, as well as some bad ones. But that's how you start."

Ms Brammell said there were some great suggestions the committee had not thought of before.

"There were some general things, like people said they don't want a static style museum, they want something more exciting than that...and they were talking about activities for kids, about having things outside as well as inside the building, the history of mining, having tactile things for blind people and just offering things to people with different learning styles. So there were a real variety of things."

From the workshops the committee will develop a content brief for the exhibition designers which will have a list of things they are hoping to have in the centre and the messages they want to convey to the visitors of the centre.

Ms Brammell said the actual building of the centre would not start for a couple of years, the committee is focusing on the planning of the centre to make it easier down the track.

"We want to avoid mistakes that other regional museums have made, because there are plenty of regional museums that are great ideas but they're not planned properly so they run into financial troubles. We want to make sure it's something that people who live here have something to go back to see again and again instead of going once and never having a reason to go back."

There will be permanent displays in the centre but there will also be spaces for community sourced exhibitions, travelling exhibitions and community activities, such as meetings and film nights.

Next year the committee will be looking for the funds needed to complete the project so all of this current planning will be used to show granting bodies and corporate partners.

"Next year will be the year we really go out looking for the big funds we need, so at the moment what we are doing is getting all our planning together so we can prove to the funding bodies what we're doing is feasible and it's something worth doing.

"So we'll come up with some conceptual drawing from the architect and designer, and a business plan, and we'll be able to take that and show that to granting bodies and corporate partners," Ms Brammell said.