Living history museums like Fort Edmonton Park, Ukrainian Cultural Village and Heritage Park in Calgary offer visitors interactive and in-depth experiences of the past, with the chance to actually embody a different point in time.
“The interpreters [are] performing … basically playing pretend as if they were actually living in these places,” research assistant Madison Fracoeur told podcast host Brooklyn Leschyshyn in a recent episode of the Office of Research Services’ Research Recast(ed) podcast. The Arts and Cultural Management student first experienced living history museums during her field placement at Fort Edmonton Park.
What’s even better is that visitors get to play as well – washing socks by hand with a washboard and wringer or fetching water to give to the horses in the barn.
Fracoeur and two other students are working with Dr. Heather Fitzsimmons Frey, associate professor and chair of the Department of Arts and Cultural Management on her “Young People are the Future” project that focuses on performances for, by and with young people in living history museums.
“Young people in our world are so often asked to represent the future, but in these environments, they’re also representing the past,” says Dr. Fitzsimmons Frey, who explains that actors or interpreters can be as young as infants. Dr. Fitzsimmons Frey’s research into performance and youth is extensive and currently includes a co-investigator role with the SSHRC Partnership Grant-funded project Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories of Performance in Canada.
She says that when visitors themselves interact with history at these museums their experiences can be even more impactful.
“So tasting, smelling, doing lots of action-oriented things so that you have an opportunity to also – as a visitor – play at experiencing the past.”
Dr. Fitzsimmons Frey says researchers notice these immersive experiences can also lead young visitors to ask a lot of questions about stories related to the time, especially real-life stories of the people being represented. Young visitors with curious minds wonder about the lives of children, women, Black and Indigenous people – and even policies of the time.
“They start to – actually – really ask difficult questions,” says Dr. Fitzsimmons Frey, which she says matters to interpreters at the museums who then want to lift up and tell those stories.
These experiences help young people today to develop a sense of the impact children had on their communities in the past – as family members, as friends, and as children who worked, learned, played and had dreams for their futures, she says.
“One of the things that I’ve been so excited about is for the queer youth [interpreters] who tell me they’ve found evidence of people like them in the past, and they forge these kind of solidarity connections – both across time and also with the queer communities in the present.”
“So you get this really beautiful connection and some of the stories make them part of their history and their community and their world. They see themselves here. These spaces are encouraging young people to find those stories.”
To hear more stories, including how food can bridge gaps across time, watch the full episode.
Watch the full episode
MacEwan’s “Research Recast(ed)” is a knowledge mobilization podcast created by the Office of Research Services and the Faculty of Fine Arts and Communications.