Walkabouts at new Workers Museum on Saturday, 6 March

As part of the launch of the Workers Museum in Newtown, there will be public Walkabouts through the new permanent exhibition.
Saturday, 6 March 2010.
There will be two Walkabouts offered, each going for about 45 min.
Times: 11:00 & 12:00.
After extensive restoration of the old Newtown municipal workers’ compound, the heritage site now opens as the “Workers Museum- A Site of Labour Migration“ to the public. The Walk About will be the first chance for visitors to experience the museum’s exciting new permanent exhibition on the history and rich heritage of migrant labour in Southern Africa.
Also for the first time the public can experience the recently built visitors’ centre that links the site museum with the Newtown Park. The launch of the Workers Museum is a joint project of the Johannesburg Development Agency, the City of Johannesburg’s Arts, Culture and Heritage Directorate, and Khanya College. The new museum is incorporated under MuseumAfricA.
Ex-residents of the Newtown municipal workers’ compound, which forms the centrepiece of the museum’s national heritage site, will be part of the guiding team.
Visitors will be able to ask ex-residents questions about their life at the compound:
What was it like to share a room with dozens of other workers and sleep on concrete bunks after a long day of work at one of the city’s municipal departments?
What was it like to live with men only, far away from their families, returning to wives and children once a year? How is compound life today?
Most of the ex-residents of the Newtown compound used to work for the Johannesburg Electricity Department and were housed at the 1913 opened compound until the early 1980s. Members of the permanent exhibition’s advisory team and the former Workers’ Library board, as well as Workers Museum and Khanya College staff will also be present at the Walk About. Any questions around the museum and its public programmes for 2010 can be asked.

About the Workers Museum and Heritage Site
The Workers Museum strives to keep the heritage of migrant workers alive and fill a gap in public memory. Like its predecessor, the Workers’ Library and Museum, the museum offers spaces for special exhibitions, cultural events as well as educational programmes around migrant labour for schools and the general public.
In co-operation with Khanya College, the Workers Museum aims to preserve and publicly promote the intangible and tangible heritage of labour migration in the Southern African region. It further will engage workers and the general public in participative heritage, memory and dialogue programmes that de-construct stereotypes, recognise diversity and contribute to social cohesion and the strengthening of cultural identities. Through the museum programmes historical and contemporary issues around the heritage of migrant labour shall be addressed in its complexity. The Workers Museum aims to preserve its national heritage site of the workers compound and white staff houses sustainably. The white staff houses, including the house of the compound manager, are situated North of the compound along Jeppe Street and include a row of domestic staff quarters. As a set, all three housing types, compound, domestic staff quarters and white staff houses are a unique symbol for the racial division of South Africa’s working class of the 20th century.
About Khanya College
Khanya College is an independent non-governmental organisation based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Established in 1986, the primary aim of Khanya College is to assist various constituencies within working class and poor communities to respond to the challenges posed by the forces of economic and political globalisation. In line with its objective to promote the heritage of workers Khanya has supported the then called Workers” Library and Museum since 1999. In 2006, it launched a memory and developmental heritage project to preserve and develop the tangible and intangible heritage of the Newtown municipal workers’ compound and white staff houses as the Workers Museum into a site museum of labour migration and, in co-operation with the City of Johannesburg and other stakeholders, worked towards its re-opening as the Workers Museum in 2010.
Event: Public Walk About at the Workers Museum – A Site of Labour Migration
Venue: The Workers Museum, Newtown Park
Date: Saturday, 6 March 2010