Last month, on October 15, I joined the Zoom Conference for the Edinburgh Mechanics Institutes Conference. I was most interested the papers that focused on the early years of individual Institutes – in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, London, Launceston and Sydney. I share some of my insights below:
In the first Institutes in Scotland and London the initial focus was on classes for skilled workers. As in SA, they all rented rooms and halls before they could fund a building of their own. In 1821 the Edinburgh lectures were held in St Cecilia’s Music Hall (Fig. 1), that reminded me of Adelaide’s first theatre, the Queen’s Theatre (Fig 2), built in 1840 – and still used.
While the content of classes emphasised the sciences at first in Scotland and England, it wasn’t long before there were other classes in design, drawing and the arts. Later, some lectures would be for entertainment as much as for education.
There were no reports that listed all of a country’s or a state’s Institutes, apart from ours in South Australia. We do know that Victoria and Tasmania have done just that, and a speaker from New South Wales reported 730 Institutes in that state. A ‘Hunt’ for Mechanics Institutes in Scotland has identified 73 to date, and a website for these is being constructed.
The early spread of SA Institutes was remarkable for our population. In 1861 SA’s population was 126,000. This was only 4% of Scotland’s population. Scotland’s population was over 3 million in that year. With the Industrial Revolution underway, Institutes for Mechanics had a vital educational role in Scotland and England. From the start n South Australia, socialising and entertainment in the Institutes were as important as education and ‘mutual improvement’.