Mel Steemson attended the mini pop-up Heritage Fair held on April 30th at the BC Provincial Museum and reported the following.
I met with the teacher responsible for the South Island Heritage Fairs. She explained that bringing back the fairs has been difficult since the time of Covid. They have been trying new formats and are presently doing smaller pop-up fairs at the Royal BC Museum instead of a large fair this year. They have held three so far this year. Five schools are involved altogether so far with large numbers of students participating.
No award is given anymore. Teachers were not keen on using this type of competition model at these grade 4 and 5 levels of quite young students.
The students seemed excited to be able to present to the public in the museum setting. Presentations are at least as good as ever and the arrangement seems to work well. Students were very enthusiastic in presenting their displays of the subjects they have chosen to talk about. Some of them even dressed the part.
One of the challenges is finding inspiration and subsequently finding information. For example, the teacher had been doing a project on John Hart and was looking for information, so I was able to present them as a resource our BC Hydro history book on the John Hart project. I explained the books are not just corporate history but are made up of interviews and information directly from the employees recollections.
