Entry 3: More Officework and Research

In the weeks leading up to the opening of the Biennale, the Education Interns were asked to do a range of research and contact duties. One of these tasks was to contact schools from disavantaged areas, or schools from the Priority Schools Funding Program to allow them to partake in the Biennale incentive which would reimburse them for the travel from georgraphically distanced areas in the greater Sydney region to come out and see some of the Biennale Venues (including MCA and Cockatoo Island). Coming from Western Sydney, i can appreciate this scheme by the Biennale, as it takes a fair amount of travel to get to the city, and these sorts of incentives are a great way to ensure all schools in all areas of sydney are able to be part of the Biennale and it allows for students to see an amazing amount of international, cutting edge contemporary art which they may not be exposed to normally, or will only see in the form of documentation. The challenges, however, of contacting schools and raising awareness and interest was rather difficult with only a few schools responding to our requests in the first few weeks.

As well as this, the interns also had to contact places for coach hire which would service an opening week event - the curator bus tour. Often, activities like this one would take up to a week to finalise to due to the collection of prices and quotes from organisations, and finding a price which would be allowable for our budget.Often times, this would require having to explicitly state the not-for-profit nature of the Biennale and its significance in the art world. Working in the office also required working alongside other departments like marketing, curatorial and events to ensure that all our planned events were adequately marketed and had an up to date guest list. Its always interesting to see the ways in which different departments work together.