The celebrated Museum in a Van program presents to kindergartens, aged care facilities and libraries throughout the state. Over 27,000 kindergarten children participate in the program each year, and 35% of these are located in regional Victoria.
Initiating cultural connections
The Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF) highlights the importance of museum and outreach experiences and their powerful impact on learning, particularly in the critical early childhood period when children have the greatest opportunities to develop neural pathways for learning. The Museum in a Van program enables this early learning opportunity to be accessible for families with geographic or physical barriers to visiting a museum. The kindergarten program has recently been reviewed by University of Melbourne academics, Associate Professor Trish Eadie and Sarah Young, as part of the McCoy research program. Findings demonstrate that the program is engaging and effective for preschool children’s learning particularly with the strong focus on language and multi-literacies.
North-west Victoria— Mildura Arts Centre
Museums Victoria collaborates with the Mildura Arts Centre (MAC) to undertake a week long residency. The outreach program presents programs to local kindergartens visiting each day; outreach staff also visit kindergartens throughout the wider Mildura region. This collaboration is in its eighth year and enables small towns such as Murrayville in remote Victoria to have access to valuable museum learning experiences.
South-west Victoria— Edenhope Kindergarten
Edenhope kindergarten is in West Wimmera Shire in far South Western Victoria. Museums Victoria is the only cultural institution the Edenhope kindergarten engages with each year; they fundraise for outreach visits by making and selling lunch boxes to the local primary school. Geographic distance from Melbourne meansit is unlikely that the Edenhope children have many opportunities to access physical museum venues.
Growth
The Museum in a Van actively takes museum programs to regional areas, providing education experiences to people who would not otherwise engage with cultural institutions. It is planned that by 2025 every kindergarten in the state will engage with the Museums Victoria outreach program.
