Heritage Office News

Revealing Hidden
Italian Heritage

Murray Brown, R.E. Barton and Pietro Schirru view caves
in an outcrop near Griffith which were adapted for
a home by a local Italian identity in the 1940s.
Photograph by Luca Stewart-Crisanti.

Italian groups all over NSW have been invited to identify those places and items which are important to local Italo-Australian communities. The active process of identifying and protecting hidden Italian heritage items began last month with a series of workshops across regional NSW.

The Heritage Office organised the workshops in partnership with C.G.I.E. (Consiglio Generale degli Italiani allEstero), Comites (Comitato degli italiani allestero), the Migration Heritage Centre NSW and local councils in the main centres of Italo-Australian population around the state.

Workshops have been held at Lismore, Griffith, Newcastle and Wollongong as part of the second phase of the Heritage Offices Italo-Australian community consultation program. Representatives of the local Italo-Australian community have been invited to presentations which inform them of the objectives of the program and the steps they need to take to identify, assess and celebrate local heritage items.

"In the Newcastle, Griffith and Lismore areas, the history of the Italian settlement is very well known, but nothing appears in the State Heritage Inventory to reflect the importance of these regions for the Italo-Australian community," says Luca Stewart-Crisanti, Italian Liaison Officer with the Heritage Office.

"We are quite sure there must be many more places that have heritage significance for the local Italo-Australian community."

Pietro Schirru, Councillor of the Italian Government Advisory Council and former President of the Italian community organisation, Comites NSW, has welcomed the opportunity to work with the Heritage Office on the consultation project.

"Heritage sites are an important way of unifying local Italo-Australian communities," he said. "They celebrate what our community has achieved, and they help the older generation to pass on their knowledge and their stories to younger people born in Australia. They also provide the wider community with information and insight into the diversity of the NSW community's heritage."

 

Lets Live Heritage
 Italian community teaches kids about heritage

Mr Michele Marinato with his grandson Vince, taken on Shark Island 1927.
Photograph courtesy of the Marinato family.
As part of Lets Live Heritage, Co.As.It presented an exhibition of photographs which beautifully illustrated the many contributions made by Italians to life, culture and heritage in NSW.

A new teaching program highlighting the Italian experience in NSW will help children appreciate the different aspects of their cultural heritage. The NSW Heritage Office is proud to support Lets Live Heritage, an initiative of Co.As.It, the Italian Association of Assistance.

The NSW Heritage Office and Co.As.It are working together to raise awareness of heritage within the environment of multicultural Australia. Using the Italian experience, the teaching kit has been developed to engage school students in recognition of the diversity of our communitys heritage.

The project uses different learning strategies such as competitions and exhibitions, seminars, lessons on research techniques, workshops on oral history, story telling and surveys with families. Families are often a rich source of information for students studying heritage. They offer a great opportunity for young people to understand their own heritage and develop a sense of pride in their identity as Australians of Italian origin.

This varied and exciting program shows us how communities can take the initiative and demonstrate their pride and sense of ownership of heritage.

The teaching kit, Lets Live Heritage provides teachers with the tools necessary to teach children about the importance of heritage and is available from Linda Nellor at Co.As.It on (02) 9564 0744.