The Royal Children’s Hospital Heritage Project is run by a project team comprising RCH staff and historians from Context. Our guest bloggers from Context will be giving regular updates on their experiences as they delve into the rich history of the RCH.

View the previous instalments here:
The RCH Heritage Project #4: History and Imagination—Nurses at the RCH
The RCH Heritage Project #3: Personality in the Papers
The RCH Heritage Project #2: First Look at the Archives
The RCH Heritage Project #1: Bringing Our History to Life

If you happened to peep through the window of The Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) Historical Room last Monday afternoon, you might have wondered what was going on: animated voices, gesticulating hands, the rustling of large sheets of paper, occasional bursts of laughter. What on Earth was all that excitement about?

Well, after months of research, writing, interviews, community feedback, brainstorming, sketching and designing, the Heritage Project is finally coming to a close. Last Monday, we excitedly presented our ideas for how The Royal Children’s Hospital can celebrate its history and heritage with a tangible presence in the new building.

The large sheets of paper displayed maps, sketches and designs of exhibition ideas that will bring the 150-year story of the RCH and its community to life. The excitement came from the many ways we are proposing to do this—using multimedia, objects, sound, images, and most importantly, the stories of real people from the past and present. These are the stories that make the RCH what it is today. Exhibitions, interactive stations, multimedia portals, downloadable apps, an image bank, projections and recording stations are just a few of the suggestions put forward.

So what happens now? We finalise our report and present our design concepts to the RCH Executive Committee. The Committee will then decide how the rich history of this great hospital can be brought to life in the not-too-distant future, culminating in the 150th anniversary of the RCH in 2020.

– The Context Team
Katherine Sheedy and Sarah Rood (Project Historians), Georgia Melville and Geoff Ashley (Project Interpretation Specialists), and Belinda Smullen and Corinne Balaam (Project Designers)