Aidan Beiboer: The Picture Show Man

The Scone Civic Theatre 

Website & Social Media campaign

Beyond the Classroom: Permanent Exhibition in restored theatre lobby.

Aidan Beiboer, "Useless Histories," History Matters Blog, (26 October 2015).

Two months ago I tentatively approached the owner of Scone’s Civic Theatre with a proposition. I was speaking with a man who stood at the very top of his profession, being one of the best ophthalmologists in Australia. Aside from travelling the world presenting at international conferences, his most recent project was a proposed $1,000,000 restoration of Scone’s Civic Theatre. This 1938 Ocean Liner Art Deco theatre was owned and managed by his parents from 1943 to 1970. Since the 1990s, the Civic Theatre had fallen into disuse. Dilapidated, abandoned, and trashed by vandals, Minas Coroneo had finally answered the calls of a passionate Scone community to restore the theatre to its past glory. 

With the restoration planned for early 2016, I made my proposition to Minas.

"Could I, with your permission Mr Coroneo, create a museum display for the foyer of your 1938 Art Deco theatre?"

Surprisingly, he agreed.

What began as a hopeful email has become a historical project that has drastically changed my perspective on history. The following provides an insight into the creative process behind the project, detailing the project’s argument, audience, importance, presentation, and my plans for its longevity.

Argument

The website I have submitted for this assessment is the first stage of a multi-faceted museum display planned for the soon to be restored Civic. On the website, I argue for the importance of the Civic Theatre to the Scone community’s past, present, and future. The About page of the website presents the following explanation of the site’s purpose and aims:

This website hopes to achieve three things. Firstly, it aims to inform people about the history of a magnificent building, and its importance to the Scone community past and present. Secondly, it seeks to provide a digital archive of historical material for future research. Finally, it hopes to entertain. 

Audience

The intended audience for this argument is the people of Scone. This community has been calling for the restoration of the Civic Theatre for years, and the buzz surrounding the restoration in 2016 is growing. In order to reach this passionate and enthusiastic audience before the restoration has taken place, I produced the website as the first stage of the larger museum display to come. This digital museum is targeted at an audience engaged with social media. On the night of submitting this assignment, I published a link to the Civic Theatre website on the SCONE COMMUNITY NOTICE BOARD Facebook page. Before submitting my project, the post had 63 likes and had begun a conversation on the coming restoration. This post reached a wide demographic of the community, pre-empting the range of people that the theatre will bring together in the coming years. The sector of the community which may be missed by this website is the older generation. This generation will be able to engage with the physical museum display at the Civic next year. I want this history to be accessible for all the community, hence the multi-faceted nature of the long-term project.

Importance

The Civic Theatre website is important to the people of Scone because the Civic Theatre itself has been, and will continue to be, important to the town. The history of the Civic is rich with stories of celebrations and community gatherings. Scone does not have a town hall, so the Civic has fulfilled that purpose, being a place where local concerts, dances, weddings, celebrations, Anzac Days, film premieres, and the weekend flicks have been held for decades. The Civic Theatre website tells the story of this building, a building which has been at the heart of some of the most important events in Scone’s history. In summary, the Civic Theatre website is important to the people of Scone because it helps to define the identity of a town through history.

Presentation

Whereas the physical display will be restricted by wall space and will require me to be selective in the material I present, the website can present a huge resource base of historical material. It is able to form a digital archive for future research, and allows its audience to learn more about aspects of history that interest them, rather than being restricted by the choices made for a physical exhibition. The website creator Jimdo was used for this project. This allowed for a range of different digital presentations, including slide shows, photo galleries, audio recordings, video recordings, and textual descriptions. WordPress was initially used for the website, however, Jimdo offered a style of presentation more suited to the elements I wished to include.

The website contains four key sections: The Opening Night; The Shiralee; Films; and the Restorations. The Opening Night and The Shiralee tell the story of two of the biggest nights in the theatre’s history, with these celebrations bringing together the Scone community. The Films section offers trailers from films made in the Scone region, providing a different experience to the other text-heavy sections. Finally, the Restorations page recounts the restoration of 1988 and pre-empts the restoration of 2016. The section on the 2016 restoration brings this website into the present, with the next chapter in the theatre’s history still being written.

The First Stage

As previously stated, the website is the first stage of a multi-faceted museum display to be installed in the restored theatre in 2016. This museum display will include: a projector in the main foyer, screening old local films on the wall behind the candy bar; the restored hand-powered projectors in glass cabinets; framed posters of films made in the local area; printed and framed documents and photographs from across the theatre’s history; and finally, the website will be displayed on an iPad kiosk, allowing people to further explore the history of the building before or after seeing a film. When the theatre opens for business in 2016, this website can easily be expanded to become the business’s website.

— AIDAN BEIBOER

Follow the Scone Civic Theatre on social media to stay updated on the restoration of this incredible and unique Ocean Liner Art Deco movie theatre.