The Google World Wonders Project
"From the archaeological areas of Pompeii to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Google’s World Wonders Project aims to bring to life the wonders of the modern and ancient world.
By using our Street View technology, Google has a unique opportunity to make world heritage sites available to users across the globe. Street View is a hugely popular feature of Google Maps which is already available in dozens of countries. It allows users to virtually explore and navigate a neighborhood through panoramic street-level images. With advancements in our camera technologies we can now go off the beaten track to photograph some of the most significant places in the world so that anyone, anywhere can explore them.
Street View has already proved a real hit for tourists and avid virtual explorers. The World Wonders Project also presents a valuable resource for students and scholars who can now virtually discover some of the most famous sites on earth. The project offers an innovative way to teach history and geography to students all over the world.
Our World Wonders Project is also supported by a broad, connected suite of other Google technologies, bringing wonders of the world within reach of an unprecedented global audience. The project website also provides a window to 3D models, YouTube videos and photography of the famous heritage sites.
Together with partners including UNESCO, the World Monuments Fund and Cyark, the World Wonders Project is preserving the world heritage sites for future generations."
(Google Inc., 31 May 2012)
Fig.1 Published on 19 Mar 2012 by "worldwonders".
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
PANDORA: Australian Web Archive
"PANDORA, Australia's Web Archive, is a growing collection of Australian online publications, established initially by the National Library of Australia in 1996, and now built in collaboration with nine other Australian libraries and cultural collecting organisations."
(National Library of Australia)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Australian cultural policy: a model for the UK
"Last November I visited Australia and the arts community was buzzing with talk about the country's proposed new cultural policy. So I took a look at the discussion document and I turned green with envy - why can't we have one of these in the UK?
In Britain we've never been good at framing a coherent approach to culture. Back in 1996 a senior civil servant at the Department for National Heritage told the Sunday Times: 'It is not part of our culture to think in terms of a cultural policy,' and not much has changed.
The Australian example shows what can be done. It's a remarkable and mercifully brief document that has many virtues.
First, it sets out the beliefs on which any serious cultural policy must be founded: 'The arts and creative industries are fundamental to Australia's identity as a society and nation, and increasingly to our success as a national economy.' It adds that 'the policy will be based on an understanding that a creative nation produces a more inclusive society and a more expressive and confident citizenry.'
Everything that follows in the document is built on this bedrock of ideology. Without such clear and transparent beliefs, and the commitment that flows from them, policies are doomed to endless wrangling about measurement and evidence.
But the document does acknowledge evidence where it exists, and uses it wisely. For example: 'Research shows that arts education encourages academic achievement and improves students' self-esteem, leading to more positive engagement with school and the broader community and higher school retention rates' - therefore 'the new national curriculum will ensure that young Australians have access to learning in the creative arts.'
But in the UK we have to suffer the non-evidence based approach of abolishing what went before just because the other lot invented it.
The next virtue is that the proposed policy not only encompasses the arts, heritage and creative industries, but extends into other areas like education and infrastructure. Culture is deemed relevant to every department of government, from the role that it plays in international relations (British Foreign and Commonwealth Office) to its economic importance (HM Treasury), from its impact on the need to build airports for cultural tourists (Department for Communities and Local Goverment) to cultural scholarship in Higher Education (Department for Education).
That relevance is a two-way street: for example, the cultural uses of high speed broadband affect hard infrastructural requirements, while the existence of the hardware creates cultural opportunities."
(John Holden, Monday 6 February 2012)
Fig.1 Australia's 1988 Bicentennial $10 Note.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Norsk Folkemuseum living history museum in Norway
"The Norsk Folkemuseum is Norway's largest museum of cultural history. With collections from around the country, the museum shows how people lived in Norway from 1500 to the present.
The more than 150 buildings in the Open-Air Museum represent different regions in Norway, different time periods, as well as differences between town and country, and social classes. The Gol Stave Church dating from 1200 is one of five medieval buildings at the museum. The contemporary history is presented through exhibitions and documentation projects focusing especially on children, youth and the multicultural population. Permanent indoor exhibitions include folk art, folk costumes, toys and Sami culture."
(Astrid Santa, Norsk Folkemuseum)
[Actors are located in some of the buildings to provide visitors with a sense of the life of the original inhabitants.]
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Mana Waka: feature-length documentary showing the re-building of the seven wakataua/war canoes of the Great Maori Fleet
"Mana Waka, working title Canoe, is a feature-length documentary made to launch New Zealand's 1990 centennial celebrations. The documentary has a fascinating history. Princess Te Puea Herangi of the Turangawaewae Marae, Ngauruawahia, was a great Maori leader committed to work that would uphold, and be used for the benefit of, the Maori people. During the late 1930s she conceived the idea of celebrating the 1940 centennial of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi by re-building the seven wakataua/war canoes of the Great Fleet, According to legend these canoes had journeyed from Hawaiki to Aotearoa some 25 generations previously. Princess Te Puea asked stills photographer R.G.H. (Jim) Manley, who had not previously made a film, to film the re-building, and he did so over a period of three years. Up north in the Puketi Forest, a great kauri tree was felled for the building of the Nga-toki-matawhaorua canoe which is now housed at Waitangi. Two totara trees from the Oruanui Forest provided the timber for the canoes that were carved and built at Turangawaewae."
(Helen Martin, 8 July 2011, Onfilm Magazine)
Fig.1 Still from "Mana Waka": NZ 1990 Documentary prod co Nga Kaitiaki o Te Puea Estate and the Turangawaewae Marae Trust dir Merata Mita camera R.G.H. Manly (filmed 1937 - 1940) ed Annie Collins kai korero/narrator Tukuroirangi Morgan film preservation Te Tumu Whakaata Taonga The New Zealand Film Commission, Ngā Kaitiaki Ō Ngā Taonga Whitiāhua The New Zealand Film Archive, NFU Laboratory, NFU Sound finecut Nga Kaitiaki o Te Marae o Turangawaewae sound Merata Mita, David Madigan, Chris Verberg, Mike Hedges, Annie Collins. 85 minutes.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
