What a bizarre word!  I guess it's infotainment with a twist of scholarship?

I also suspect it's what the Powerhouse Museum's Education & Visitor
Services Department  is fairly heavily into!  Most of our programs, whether
directed at schools or the general public, combine education, entertainment
and exhibitions (the three 'e's instead of the three 'r's).  I think you
would find this is fairly SOP for Australian museums - Sydney's Historic
Houses Trust do some marvellous and very theatrical programs.

Our holiday programs are usually exhibition related - the current October
fortnight celebrates the Festival of the Dreaming in Sydney.  Aboriginal &
Torres Strait Islander dance and music performances are associated with the
new exhibition Ngaramang Bayumi (music and dance) and demonstrations of
batik making by artists from the Utopia community of Central Australia
compliment an exhibition of their work, Hot Wax, also on display.  The kids'
workshop allows young artists to try their hand at making their own batik
squares to take home.

During Term 4, alongside regular packages and other schools' programs, we
run special events such as Storytime for infants schools - relating to
exhibitions on Transport, Circus, Festival of the Dreaming  and the Chinese
exhibitions, Evolution & Revolution and Lions of Retreat Street - and the
Chinese Cultural Days - three in November are already booked out - which
combine circus, folk dancing, workshops, Chinese Opera make-up sessions with
visits to the two exhibitions and the near-by Chinese Garden.

In our experience, this blend seems to work for our visitors.

Although it may not give you a great deal of info on this precise topic, it
might be worth your while to look at The Manual of Museum Management Barry
Lord & Gail Dexter Lord.  London.  The Stationary Office 1997 for some
insights into how it can fit together.

Heleanor Feltham
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 ----------
From: daemon
To: MUSEUM-L
Subject: edutainment
Date: Tuesday, 30 September 1997 10:48AM

Hi everybody,

I am a student in the Masters of Museology at the University of Montreal
and I am doing a project on edutainment in museums:  Is this the way to
the futuree.

I would really appreciate your input on this topic.  Also if anyone knows
of sources-- articles, books-- which discuss edutainment, I would really
appreciate if you could let me about them.

Thank you very much
Danielle Dugas
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