The Institute’s 2024 Annual General Meeting will be held on...
This special edition of our regular Twilight Talks series will feature speakers discussing the history of cinema in Ballarat, complimenting our free exhibition. Just a year after the Lumière brothers invented the cinematograph in 1895, the first screenings were held at the Mechanics’ Institute, meaning many had their first ever experience of ‘moving pictures’ in our beautiful Minerva Theatre.
Since then, thousands of movies have been screened in the theatre through its many iterations, including at the Vegas 70 theatre which is being reactivated for this year’s Heritage Week. Come along from 5.30pm to grab a drink and wander through the exhibition in the Williamson Foyer, the former candy bar of the cinema, before the talk.
The BMI’s Twilight Talks series has been a forum for sharing fascinating history and radical futures since 2001, check out our website for upcoming talks.
At Play in the Fields of the past: Roleplaying, gaming and local heritage | Dr David Waldron
Over the past few years, David Waldron has been experimenting with the use of live-play roleplaying game events to explore local Ballarat history and heritage in the community. These have featured events at the past three Ballarat Heritage Festivals featuring the stories Journey to the Southern Cross, What Lies Beneath, William Bailey’s Haunted Mansion and this year’s, Spectral Schemes: the Mystery of the Ballarat Ghost.
David has also recently published a spin-off story that explores the feud between Henry Seekamp and 1850s celebrity Lola Montez. Through these events, David has endeavoured to create a vehicle for community engagement and re-enchantment in local history, with a specific orientation to the young adult demographic, which has often been a difficult audience to attract to local history.
This talk explores the process of creating as one of walking a tightrope between historical fiction, storytelling, and heritage weaving through surviving sources and historical records designed to create deeply personal engagement with the people, events, and places of the past and the very human stories that underlie our local history.
Speaker: David Waldron | Folklorist & Historian
Dr David Waldron is a Senior Lecturer in History at Federation University Australia with a research focus on folklore and community heritage. He is the author of Sign of the Witch: Modernity and the Pagan Revival (Carolina Academic Press 2008), Shock! The Black Dog of Bungay – a Case Study in Local Folklore (Hidden Press 2010) and Snarls from the Tea-Tree: Victoria’s Big Cat Folklore (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2013), editor/contributor of Goldfields and the Gothic: a Hidden Heritage and Folklore (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2016) and author of Aradale: the Making of a Haunted Asylum (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2020).
He is regularly involved in public engagements, festivals and multi-media displays, including the Ballarat Heritage Festival, and is the co-writer and researcher for the National Trust of Australia People’s Choice award historical pod cast series Tales from Rat City. He is also active in developing history and heritage tours including the NTAV Public Heritage award nominated Ballarat Old Gaol Tour and the Portsea Quarantine Station night tours.
Starting at 6pm (bar open at 5.30pm), close 7pm.
Cost: $12 general admission | $8 BMI members
Thanks to the support of Community Bank Buninyong
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