Member Spotlight - Sally McPhee

Sally McPhee

Creative Producer, Placemaking and Interpretation, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria

I’m more comfortable asking people about themselves than talking about myself. I find people fascinating, the good, the bad and the ugly about us as individuals, as a society, Australians and as the human race. I love language and thinking critically about how it moves and shifts to frame our understanding of the past, present and hopes or fears for the future. On one level, I’m in a constant existential crisis, on another, I’m in constant wonder at the beauty of people and our world. It’s a wild ride!

What was the start of your interpretation journey?

I didn’t study straight out of high school. I deferred a film studies degree at Griffith University in QLD to help my parents with their business and pursue other interests like trying to be an actress, learning Swedish remedial massage and falling in love for the first time. I eventually did a partial communications and cultural studies BA at University of Queensland before transferring to Melbourne Uni to study cinema. But I never finished for a bunch of reasons, some sad, some happy. I had an enriching career in the performing arts as a producer, working on programs for families, young people and communities. In that world, I met the most inspirational (and for me, influential) people, artists, colleagues and leaders. As a proper adult in my late thirties, I returned to study Urban and Regional Planning at RMIT, a Bachelor degree with Honours, not to be a planner, but as a broad social science degree, I thought it might help me understand why the world is the way it is. I believe deeply and madly (and naively?) that the purpose of higher education isn’t to get a job, but to learn how to think and figure out how to advocate for our values and beliefs.

What does interpretation mean to you?

I’ll tell you what it doesn’t mean to me: any particular form of medium! I get frustrated when our work is reduced to ‘signs’.

I guess I have a constructivist understanding of the world and of meaning making, meaning I don’t believe in one version of things or one singular truth, but multiple ways of knowing, and working in interpretation dials up that belief to 11. I accept the view that how we understand things is entangled in what we value individually, and our assumptions about how things ‘should’ be, whether we realise this or not. I am interested in the building blocks of understanding and knowing, from the composition of a film shot or photograph to the construction of sentences or choice of words. I think the greatest gift of interpretation is when we encourage the visitor to experience something in themselves, to create space for layering their own understanding or bringing their own experiences to whatever it is we’re interpreting. And I think one way of doing this well is to create interpretative experiences that are beautiful and as good as they can possibly be, that embed the cleverness and stories of the many people contributing to their making as well as respecting the stories they share.

When and how did you start working in interpretation?

Entirely by accident! I didn’t even know there was such a profession when I was at school. Sidebar: I think interpretation has a branding problem. Now that I know what it’s called, there’s been an element of interpretation in all of my jobs. I used to work in niche fragrance, body care and cosmetics retail and storytelling is 99% of the job in that industry.

But the biggest shift probably came after my urban planning degree. I did my thesis about the representation of swimming in Melbourne’s Yarra River, Birrarung in the early 20th century, which looked at the framing of the river over time. The part of this research that most influenced me was digging into the ongoing argument about the nature/human connection and the separation of people and nature, rather than seeing people as part of nature, and cities as part of nature. Nature isn’t just out there, in the wilderness, it is always here, always around us. This process unlocked a real desire to work in that space where this relationship might be reframed. I dove into that by co-creating a program for Open House Melbourne called Waterfront and the podcast series This is Public. All of this was interpretation, but I still didn’t know that’s what it was called. I worked on a few research projects at the Gardens before applying for the job I’m in now, with a job title I’m constantly asked to explain (or interpret!) and the rest is history.

What is your favourite interpretive project to date and why?

Three Capes Walk in Tasmania. I did this with my partner and two close friends and it was our first multi-day walk. I felt swept away by it and how story was embedded at every step, in every intervention, from the boat ride to the trail head to the creation of the story seats, the companion booklet and the way it made the storytelling a communal experience (we read stories to each other at every break); the stories shared by rangers in cabins each night. I’d never experienced something so considered and so generous. When I started at the Gardens I researched how it was made and who was behind it, and found an Interpretation Australia submission for it online. There I read one of the most beautiful provocations I think I’d ever heard: ‘How much can we give? How little can we intrude?’ and swooned. What an incredible way to position interpretation. In the submission, I found out a woman named Fiona Rice led the interpretation project. She had no website but she has a LinkedIn account and I told my boss about it and she said ‘Why don’t you just get in touch with her and we can invite her over?’. And I did. And we did. And since then, Fiona, along with her design collaborator, Alex Miles are now two of our most loved and trusted creatives at the Gardens. We’ve devised great projects together, including some of the ones I’m most proud of.

Of the projects I’ve worked on, I’d say Sonica Botanica is the closest to my heart. We create this with Melbourne sound artist Patrick Cronin, who is a humble genius at not only sound design and music, but at the creative process itself. He’s a real creative producer who has an incredible back catalogue of place-based community participation projects. He’s also an amazing musician and sound designer. I treasure the people we’ve met through this project and the conversations we’ve had. And I love that it gives us data ie we can see how many people have listened! That’s hard to do for a sign.

What role does Interpretation have in the world today?

Public space and nature are both contested ideas and spaces, but the process of making interpretation within a space like a botanic gardens, with the right time and resources, provides an avenue for navigating these contested spaces. It offers space for human connection, as well as nature and place connection and hopefully plays a small part in healing our world and society.