Have you ever wondered who gets to choose the exhibitions at the Museum and if the staff get to play hide and seek after hours?

Well, we sent in our investigative team of kids to ask these and other questions to WA Museum Director of Engagement, Jason Fair.

Jason has worked at the WA Museum for 18 years. He started out managing all the things you can buy at the Museum, such as toys in the shop and food at the café. He quickly became really interested in the people who visited the Museum. Jason wanted to better understand why people came to visit and what they wanted to see. This led him to his current job.

Here are the questions our little investigators put to him.

What is your favourite part of working at the museum?

I love the diversity of my job. One minute I could be meeting with the Italian Consulate General, or the Ambassador from Peru, and the next I am supervising the installation of a new exhibition about the Moon.

How did you get to have your job?

Believe it or not, I worked for a big toy store company before coming to work at the WA Museum. I got my current job because of all the work I did to learn about and value our visitors and what they liked to see when they came to the Museum.

Do you get to play with the exhibits before everyone else?

I sure do! This is how I check to make sure all our visitors can come and have a great time interacting with our exhibitions.

Do you get to play hide and seek in the museum?

Unfortunately, no, but when the new museum was first opened, I got lost A LOT and had to find my way out! That was a bit like playing hide-and-seek.

Can you tell us a secret about the museum that most people don’t know?

I have an office that is in an old safe!

How do you come up with ideas for new exhibitions?

We plan our exhibitions many years in advance and I have a team of amazing staff who help choose and design exhibitions for our visitors to enjoy.

For example, our exhibition To the Moon came from wanting to share with our visitors the current work in space development happening in Perth and our connection with space. So, we started by borrowing a piece of Moon rock from NASA and displaying Luke Jerram’s seven metre moon replica.

With these two items and a team of great people, we were able to build an interactive and fun exhibition.

If you could bring one exhibit to life, which one would it be?

That is easy, the Night Parrot, a specimen on display in the Wild Life gallery, which is so rare it was once thought extinct. It came to the Museum after dying due to injuries when it was caught by its wing on a fence, which was very sad.

The Night Parrot is really hard to find—not only is it nocturnal (only coming out at night) but it lives in some of the harshest parts of Australia.

So, if I could bring it back to life and set it free where it came from, I would!

However, specimens like the Night Parrot help our scientists and researchers learn more about this mysterious bird, which will help us protect them in the future.

What is your favourite thing in the museum?

Ross Potter’s hand drawn young humpback whale drawn at life-size and hanging outside the Wild Life gallery at Boola Bardip.

It is my favourite because it was drawn by hand using a pencil and it is life-size! Ross created the drawing while doing some workshops at the WA Maritime Museum in Fremantle and donated it to the WA Museum’s collection. I saw Ross when he was working on it and he told me that he was inspired by a 45-minute encounter with a humpback whale off Hillarys.

How can I work in a museum when I grow up?

There are so many different opportunities at the Museum.

One of the things I like about the Museum is the variety of jobs people do and how they all work together to make the Museum a great place to visit. You could work as a scientist, a curator who researches the objects in our collection, a visitor services officer helping visitors, a retail assistant in one of our shops, you could also build the digital parts of our exhibitions or teach children who visit our museums.

There are so many ways to be part of the Museum, you can even volunteer once you turn 16!

 

Jason was a good sport, answering our young investigators’ questions. He also shared with us some of the super exciting things coming up across summer at WA Museum Boola Bardip.

Check out the biggest and best VR experience The Great Kimberley Wilderness where you will be able to get up close and personal with some of the most untouched areas of the Kimberley region.

If virtual reality isn’t quite your thing, you can take a self-guided ‘Codebreakers’ tour. Part scavenger hunt, part escape room, this is a different way to explore Boola Bardip and possibly the closest you will get to hide-and-seek!

For those, not quite old enough to be breaking codes, we have our little learners program which is educator-led and designed especially for 2-5-year-olds.

Best of all, we have our drop-and-leave school holiday programs allowing kids to get the best out of the Museum while adults take a break. Get in quick as these tend to book out each school holidays.

WA Museum Boola Bardip is one of seven public sites operated by the Western Australian Museum. Based at the Perth Cultural Centre, WA Museum Boola Bardip is open 9.30am - 5pm every day except Good Friday and Christmas Day and reduced hours on Anzac Day (1-5pm).

 

This article was first published in the City of Perth 24/25 Summer Events Guide.