Hyde Park Barracks - Sydney - NSW - Australia
Posted by: CADS11
S 33° 52.170 E 151° 12.750
56H E 334666 N 6250875
Hyde Park Barracks museum?
Waymark Code: WMVDFA
Location: New South Wales, Australia
Date Posted: 04/05/2017
Views: 2
The Hyde Park Barracks Museum is a brick building and compound designed by convict architect Francis Greenway between 1818 and 1819; originally built at the head of Macquarie Street (1819) to house convict men and boys.
The site is managed by the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales as a museum open to the public for a modest fee. The site is listed on New South Wales' State and Australian National Heritage registers, and is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as one of 11 pre-eminent Australian Convict Sites as amongst "the best surviving examples of large-scale convict transportation and the colonial expansion of European powers through the presence and labour of convicts.
Museum
In 1991, Hyde Park Barracks underwent conservation and adaptation work by award-winning architects Tonkin Zulaikha Greer and conservation architects Clive Lucas Stapleton and Partners. The completed project won the Australian Institute of Architects national Lachlan Macquarie Award in 1992. Now, the newly installed Hyde Park Barracks is a museum operated by the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales. Tourists who visit the building discover the daily lives of convicts and other occupants through exhibitions on Sydney’s male convict labour force, Australia’s convict system, an innovative soundscape, excavated artefacts, exposed layers of building fabric and the complex’s rooms and spaces.
In June 2015, Mark Speakman the Minister for the Environment of New South Wales announced Unlocking Heritage, a two-year program aimed at giving children the opportunity to experience Sydney's living museums. This program will allow students to wear convict clothing and sleep in the Barrack's hammocks. A million dollars has been allocated for this program. Museum director Mark Goggin thinks that children will learn more about history if they can experience it hands-on, '"Particularly for the kids to wear the convict shirts, eat the gruel, sleep over with their mates in hammocks and imagining what life was like 200 years ago."' The program is starting out with children and hoping to expand to adult participation.
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