[A guest post from Kathy, one of our brilliant IDC volunteers!] 

Photo: Rodney Start  Source: Museum Victoria

On November 22, 2009, the Immigration Museum will celebrate Melbourne's Lebanese community. The Lebanese Cedar Festival showcases Lebanese culture through traditional music, dance, talks and films. Come along to enjoy roving entertainers, games such as touleh (backgammon) and lebanese coffee and sweets!

The Immigration Discovery Centre has a diverse range of resources focussing on migration and cultural diversity. We at the IDC have been having fun preparing for the Lebanese Festival. Resources include the Lebanese Resource Folder, a range of reference books and an Infosheet (prepared by one of our volunteers) on Lebanese migration to Australia. This contains a list of useful websites.

Infosheets have also been prepared on Dutch, German and Indonesian migration to Australia, with more to come soon...

Volunteers play an important role in the Immigration Discovery Centre, helping with things such as answering queries, preparing InfoSheets, and participating in community celebrations. If you'd like to find out more about volunteering with Museum Victoria, you can get more information here.

Today the Immigration Discovery Centre welcomed the most remarkable set of researchers: ESL students from Melbourne's CAE doing projects on waves of migration to Australia. I did my best to direct the students towards the resources most suitable for their ambitious assignments:  

Photo: Jan Molloy  Source: Museum Victoria

The whole centre buzzed with the exchange of books, ideas and questions as people who'd recently arrived in Australia unearthed the stories of those who'd come before, learning at so many levels that I stopped counting. 

Photo: Jan Molloy  Source: Museum Victoria

Since the opening of Melbourne Museum's "Day in Pompeii" exhibition, the Discovery Centre has had a Roman flavour, featuring ancient coins, gladiator helmets and books about Rome. Along with a "coin trail" in which children answer questions about gods and emperors, there's an activity table set up for coin-rubbing at which the profiles of Claudius, Nero, Trajan and Caracalla emerge beneath the crayons of visitors of all ages (but mainly the young): 

Photo: Philip Thiel  Source: Museum Victoria

 This fun activity has proven so tempting that some of our own staff-members have been spotted having a rub - in disguise...

Photo: Philip Thiel  Source: Museum Victoria

Back in April this year the Museum ran a children's activity celebrating the launch of the new Dinosaur Walk exhibition where kids could make their very own dinosaur masks. Discovery Centre staff member Jo was particularly impressed with this activity and had a go herself - her results are well-documented in my earlier post, Bad-Jo-Jo-A-Saurus.

As the mask-making activity went down so well with both Jo and the kids, a similar activity (among many others) was developed for the recent winter school holidays to celebrate the opening of the blockbuster Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition A Day in Pompeii, where kids were able to construct their own Roman gladiator helmets.

Once again, the activity proved popular with both the kids and the staff - witness below Discovery Centre volunteer staff member Susan, eagerly awaiting the thumbs-up or thumbs-down from the Emperor...

Photo: Meg Lomax  Source: Museum Victoria

Photo: Philip Thiel  Source: Museum Victoria

Melbourne Museum has launched a new exhibition, A Day in Pompeii, and the Discovery Centre is adapting accordingly, highlighting books about Rome and volcanoes, offering a coin rubbing activity for kids. Making space for the coins took a bit of reshuffling, in the centre, including the relocation of our heritage dinosaur statuettes from one room to another. Tertiary placement student Michael had no idea that his time with us would involve such labour! 

Photo: Philip Thiel  Source: Museum Victoria