Committing to Place: museum outreach as NRM extension.

The Committing to Place research project was funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant involving the Tasmanian Institute of Agricultural Research (TIAR) at the University of Tasmania, the Murray-Darling Basin Commission and the National Museum of Australia. The overarching aim of the research was to investigate means of activating and maintaining community participation in natural and cultural resource initiatives in the Murray-Darling Basin. The main research activity of the project was to evaluate and reflect on a series of outreach, extension and education projects. The project considered three research questions: (1) In what ways did these outreach and education activities engage diverse communities? (2) Did these outreach and educational activities influence engagement in NRM issues? (3) What methods are useful for organisations to use in developing and implementing outreach and educational activities that are meaningful for communities? The full final report of the project can be downloaded from the project website: http://www.utas.edu.au/ruralcommunities/committing-to-place.htm Three key learnings: (1) There are considerable advantages in using indirect ways to promote natural resource management. (2) There are considerable advantages in developing outreach programs that integrate the principles of community engagement into the development and delivery of collaborative and participatory projects. (3) There should be a continued focus on local places in outreach and extension projects, however, in order to appeal to broader audiences, there needs to be an embedding of these local stories in wider contexts.