Every Penny: a History of our Early Fundraising
Curator name(s): Emily Collins, Museum Consultant, WCHN History & Heritage Collection
Gallery Location: Level 1, Zone F — just past the Queen Victoria Lecture Theatre
Exhibition dates: March 2019 to end April 2019
The month of March heralds a new exhibition in the Yellow Heart Gallery at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, in connection with celebrating 140 years of caring for families. Curated by Emily Collins, the WCHN’s Museum Consultant, this exhibition is called Every Penny: a History of our Early Fundraising.
Every Penny is packed with fundraising tales from the early years of this institution, when the former Adelaide Children’s Hospital and Queen Victoria Hospital raised a lot of their own funds in order to provide healthcare services.
From its foundation, the Children’s Hospital maintained a close relationship with newspapers to promote its needs and fundraising activities. From celebrities to community auxiliaries, people from all walks of life took up the children’s cause. Some fundraising schemes were inventive – some even hilarious! The Queen Victoria Hospital hit its fundraising stride later in the 1980s, with the advent of a new public relations officer and the Telethon.
The exhibition is primarily shaped by major fundraising activities in the history of the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, such as the popular Radio 5AD-Channel 7 Good Friday Appeals, and the glamorous Girl of the Year Quest. Every Penny also references a few lesser known, yet honourable fundraising mentions. Its aim is to inform of this incredible legacy of activity, and equally to entertain.
In the early years of this institution, every penny raised was appreciated and put to good use. Not much has changed today – except for the currency! The job of fundraising to support the Hospital goes on, so that it may continue to care for families for 100 years and four score more. Led by the Women’s & Children’s Foundation, additional funds area raised in the community to support our hospital every day. These funds contribute to a range of needs across equipment and facilities, research and our hospital environment via their Arts in Health programs.
Every Penny: a History of our Early Fundraising is on display in the Yellow Heart Gallery (Level 1, Zone F) at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital from early March until the end of April 2019.
To download the exhibition brochure, click here.
For enquiries please contact the WCH Foundation by email or phone 08 8464 7900.