Every night after the sun sets at WA Museum Boola Bardip, you can witness a trailblazing partnership in action. The Founding Partnership between the Minderoo Foundation (Minderoo) and the Foundation for the WA Museum (FWAM) has sustainability at its core, delivering outcomes for the Western Australian Museum and WA community now and for many years to come.
In 2011, Andrew and Nicola Forrest donated 800,000 Fortescue Metals Group shares, which formed the core of FWAM’s Discovery Endowment Fund (Endowment Fund). The Endowment Fund was established to build a capital base capable of delivering sustainable financial support for the WA Museum for future generations.
Since then, the Endowment Fund has continued to grow, with Minderoo being joined by five other Founding Partners supporting the Endowment Fund. Minderoo, and the Forrest family, have supported the WA Museum in many ways for over a decade, and in 2021 provided a major grant to the Museum to establish Illuminate – an ongoing series of outdoor projections, on the façade of the Old Gaol building in the heart of Boola Bardip. The inaugural, and recurring program, Timescapes, brings to life the many stories of Western Australia; it is interspersed with other programs related to the Museum’s activity.
FWAM CEO Coralie Bishop. Image by Kelly Pilgrim Byrne.
Dividend payments from the original FMG share gift started funding “Minderoo Grants” to the WA Museum in 2018. FWAM’s CEO, Coralie Bishop, explained, “The Foundation for the WA Museum
supports strategic initiatives at the WA Museum that have a social, cultural, or scientific impact on WA and the broader community. The Museum submits a range of Minderoo Grant projects to
FWAM each year. Projects are selected based on their ability to promote and sustain public interest in the Museum as a place of discovery, discussion, and debate about our collective past, present and future, support exhibition development or public engagement with the Museum.”
FWAM’s Minderoo Grants have funded projects ranging from using cutting edge molecular DNA technologies to analyse biological specimens, to an expedition to seek fossil evidence of Cretaceous toothed birds, marine reptiles, sharks and rays from the Pillawarra Plateau north of Kalbarri, to the Nothing but Memories project – a collecting initiative to document natural disasters in WA between 2006 and 2021.
Audiences will be able to enjoy the latest project funded by a Minderoo Grant from May onwards: a new program in the Illuminate nightly projection series. The latest commission is inspired by the Wild About Babies sculpture trail, developed by artists Gillie and Marc, also launching in May. The Wild About Babies night projections will build awareness of endangered species, through visually rich and large-scale projections of vulnerable species in their natural habitat. The free nightly projections commence at dusk and will be on display from 19 May 2023.
For the Minderoo Foundation, the Founding Partnership with FWAM sits in the context of a contemporary philanthropic strategy focussed on tackling seemingly intractable challenges, drive
significant change and accelerate impact.
The Illuminate: Wild About Babies night projections will be on display at WA Museum Boola Bardip from 19 May. Image by VJZoo.
With over $2.6 billion invested in philanthropic causes, Minderoo Foundation is one of Australasia’s largest philanthropic organisations. Supported causes range from eliminating childhood cancer, improving early childhood education, ending modern slavery, combatting global overfishing, plastic pollution and global warming, to culture and the arts.
“Minderoo takes a strategic, evidence-based approach by using research to see where impact is needed”, Minderoo’s Acting Director of Arts and Culture, Andrew Baker, stated. “This is reflected in Minderoo’s support for the WA Museum, as museums deploy and celebrate the scientific method, and can be a powerful force for change. We at Minderoo believe that access to high-quality arts and cultural experiences must be equitable, and museums play a vital role in sharing important cultural stories and inspiring younger people to be interested in innovation, creativity and science.”
The value placed on evidence-based impact measurement is shared by FWAM. FWAM has commenced measuring project success using the Culture Counts platform, which allows projects
to be evaluated across civic, cultural, economic, environmental, social and quality outcome areas, and measure the full value of activities in the arts, culture and community sectors.
“It is a prerequisite of sustainable support to be able to measure project outcomes as well as the broader, long-term impact, and I’m pleased that FWAM is working towards full evaluation of
all projects we fund”, Coralie Bishop explained. “This approach also enables us to speak the same language as partners like the Minderoo Foundation and makes the collaboration with them so much more powerful.”
