Thanks to generous funding from the Knick Knack Nook and ongoing support from Decoda Literacy Solutions and the Bowen Literacy Task Group, the BICS Youth Curator program is running again this year (and next year,) to promote connections between youth and local history. The program is facilitated by Sarah Haxby, Community School Coordinator, in partnership with the Bowen Island Museum’s Curator, Archivist and support from the Museum and Archives Board members.
The program, now in its sixth year, gives youth the experience of visiting the museum and archives and learning how to be curators of their own exhibition. Youth Curators select a topic that interests them that is inspired by the BC Heritage Week’s theme. Eight youth curators have been going to visit the museum and archives weekly to research and curate their exhibits. Students have been learning about archives and artifacts, how to access photos in the archives and from the online database.
This year’s theme: Our Main Street: at the heart of the community is a very inspiring topic for the youth curators who are researching the local history of not one, but two of our island’s main streets. Their research has lead them in an exciting direction and their exhibit is called: “Bowen’s Main Street and other main street” which looks at the main street from the ferry to the school, as well as Tunstall Bay which used to have its own main street which included boat and barge docking facilities, a store, an electricity generating station, a dynamite factory, houses, a post office and more. Youth Curators have been researching the original location of the two historic post offices on Bowen, the history of the Public Library, how homes were moved to Tunstall Bay by barge and how the dynamite factory blew-up more than once. As the curators have been saying: “it’s going to be a dynamite show!”
The Youth Curator program was created in order to get students interested in their local history, and over the last five years we have seen that youth are very interested and engaged by an exhibit created by youth for youth than by exhibits created ‘just by adults.’ With the help of the Museum and Archives curator and archivist the youth curators create an exhibit based on their own research which celebrates BC Heritage Week by looking through their own community’s lens to directly explore, research and share Bowen Island history in a hands-on fashion. History presented by youth for youth creates an exhibit that all the classes at BICS look forward to visiting. The exhibit and the interactive guide to the exhibit are accessible for public viewing 3-8pm Monday-Friday in the BICS display case Feb 18th -April 15th.
