6 minute read
PLC Archive
New ways of learning and connecting with business, family and friends, shortages of face masks, hand santiser, major disruptions at home and work… and now the suggestion that the AFL Grand Final 2020 relocate to Queensland, Sydney or Geelong!
Lil with A.S. Neill at Summerhill
Source: Quote from Marie Antoinette by Stefan Zweig, in a book presented to the College by Old Collegian Panette Bryant in 1954 now... Archive Donations
How are you dealing with the daily challenges?
Pandemics have significantly impacted society and changed the course of human history before, but this is your invitation to include your photographs, reflections, anecdotes, triumphs and failures in the College’s collective ‘iso” memory. You may have family, patients and emergency services workers, who have been more directly affected by the COVID–19 crisis. How has your family, coped with face masks, sanitiser, coughing in the elbow, knocking elbows as greeting, home schooling, working from home, lockdown restrictions, video conferencing, social distancing or added new words to the 2020 COVID–19 lexicon https://public.oed. com/blog/the-language-of-covid-19/
The PLC Archive has a mandate to capture and steward the memories, stories and the history of the College for the present and future generations. 2020 is certainly providing an extraordinary opportunity for each of us to contribute to the College’s collective memory and curriculum resources for the students and staff of tomorrow. Please consider including your stories, hobbies, joys, achievements and disappointments, in the Archive and email your COVID 2020 MOMENT contribution to jdyer@plc.vic.edu.au
Help us build the College Archive for the future.
Jane Dyer PLC Archivist
As with the rest of the world, COVID-19 pandemic restrictions temporarily closed the Archive to on-site visitors, students, staff and volunteers. The ability to accept donations was also reduced. The ongoing successful operation of the PLC Melbourne Archive to retain and preserve the history of the education of women, and the contribution the PLC community has made nationally and globally, is enriched by donation. Donations of archives, primary source material originated by, or mentioning the College, auxiliary organisations and Alumni may be in a range of formats: uniform, manuscripts, papers, minutes, correspondence, books, maps, photographs, audio recordings or artefacts.
Old Collegian, Carolyn Blyth (Gray 1960) visited her old school recently to donate to the Archive a PLC Crested Book Prize which her great aunt, Emilie Marianna Bryant, was awarded for Arithmetic in December 1908. Carolyn has lived in the UK for 50 years, so was very interested in the huge changes to the campus over the year. She particularly enjoyed the Heritage Centre and is pictured here with copies of her old school uniforms. Like so many Old Collegians, she still keeps in touch with her special friends from school.
Henry Handel Richardson
One of the most pleasurable aspects of the Henry Handel Richardson Society’s recent experience has been the expanding and fruitful relationship with HHR’s old school – PLC. Only twelve months ago the school graciously hosted our annual oration, delivered by Professor Stefan Welz from Leipzig.
Since then, a Society tour to HHR sites in Britain and Germany in September 2019 revealed two matters of particular significance to PLC. One of these was to do with HHR’s sister, Lil Neustatter, who also attended the school and was in many ways as notable as her sister. Lil was a gifted musician, a suffragette who endured a jail term, and an educationist who, along with A.S.Neill, founded the progressive school, Summerhill. As a result of the sleuth work of our President, Graeme Charles, we were able to find her previously unidentified grave and have a plaque erected in Llanfairfechan, in Wales.
In Leipzig we were privileged to attend a celebration of the completion of the translation into German of HHR’s first novel, “Maurice Guest”. The novel is set in the world of music students at the end of the nineteenth century in Leipzig, where HHR and Lil and other PLC students, notably Marie Hansen, also studied. (For detailed accounts of these events read newsletters for January 2020 and April 2020 on our website: www. henryhanderichardsonsociety.org) 2020 is a landmark year for the Society – the sesquicentenary of HHR’s birth in Melbourne in 1870. Unfortunately the pandemic forced the postponement of the annual oration that PLC had once again generously agreed to host. We look forward to the next Oration which will be held at PLC on 19 June 2021.
History in the raw…
So what are archives?
Archives diaries, letters, drawings and memoirs – are primary sources created by those who participated in or witnessed the events of the past. Archives have the power to change our view of history as a series of facts, date and events. Primary sources, real and personal, fascinate learners of all ages.
For over 145 years, generations of PLC Old Collegians, students and staff have stewarded and integrated the College’s unique collection of archives into the life of the College and its wider communities. Today, historical scholarship and understanding comes alive as students and researchers touch the lives of the people, the evidence of others, about whom history is written.
Mrs Anne Harvie (Baldwin 1936), PLC Archive Volunteer and former PLC English Teacher with JS Students. Source: PLC Archive PLC Archivist and Student Volunteers. Source: PLC Archive
“Our archives are an important part of our history because they tell the stories of and the achievements of generations of alumni of many exceptional women” Wendy Fishley (Olney 1955), PLC Archive Assistant.
Students begin to recognize how a point PLC Students, East Melbourne, 1900. of view and bias affects evidence. Differences Source: PLC Archive among students in interpreting documents are not unlike those among historians. They also confront the language of the time and come across human expressions that provide history with colour and excitement and directly link students to its cast of characters… then…
“Using the words of historical author, Sara Sheridan, our archives are treasure troves - a testament to many lives lived and the complexity of the way we move forward. They contain clues to the real concerns of day-to-day life that bring the past alive. The individual documents are like signposted roads, heading to a variety of intriguing possibilities.” Marion Wilson (Looke 1974), PLC Archive Cataloguer. Patchwork, August 1913. Source: PLC Archive
Archives breathe life into the stories of our past…
Archives tell us something that even the best-written article or book cannot convey.
Patchwork, August 1934. Source: PLC Archive
Jane Dyer PLC Melbourne Archivist
“PLC has had a long, proud tradition of being socially aware. It is always fascinating to look in the Patchworks of this era, one during which the White Australia policy was in full and terrible force, and read the compassion with which the girls wrote about these issues. Much like the PLC girls of today, they were unafraid to speak up about issues of injustice.” Alex Owen (2018), PLC Archive Assistant
[Collage of Photos, Clockwise from Top Left: Patchwork, July 1901; PLC East Melbourne Autograph Book, 1932; PLC Junior School Art lesson at Hethersett, Burwood, 1946; Letters from French schoolgirls, 1940; Archive volunteer and former PLC Music teacher Aileen Stooke (1943); PLC East Melbourne doll made by former Craft teacher Betty Stuart (Clayton 1942); PLC Patchwork August, 1934: Research: Louise Hanson-Dyer Collection (Source: PLC Archive) When students and teachers participate together in the exciting and evolving process of historical inquiry, returns, in terms of knowledge, skills and interest, can be great and lasting.
