(FIRE) 

Late 2022 Heritage Community Investment Program (HCIP) recipients: Career Development (Applications via rolling intake throughout 2023)

Jean Middleton – ICOM Conference Travel to Prague

From August 22nd to 28th, 2022 the International Council of Museums (ICOM) hosted its general conference in Prague, Czech Republic. ICOM’s conferences are held every three years to encourage a global exchange of cultural ideas that can inspire action at a local scale. ICOM conferences address challenges facing contemporary museums and work toward innovative solutions. The 2022 conference theme was The Power of Museums, broken down into four topics: purpose, sustainability, vision, and delivery. Many of the sessions resonated with Middleton’s work at the Alberta Aviation Museum (AAM). The conference examined ways for museums to recover from the challenges of recent years including, but not solely, the pandemic. 

Edie Muldrew – Interpretation Canada 2022 National Conference

As a relatively new interpreter and museum professional at the Alberta Aviation Museum, Edie attended the 2022 Interpretation Canada Conference to network with Canadian museums and museum professionals, gaining a great breadth of learning opportunities in one place and given a better idea of the scope and application of interpretation techniques. The theme of storytelling yielded edifying talks and tours concerning the implications of how Canada’s “story” are told and by whom on museum practice.

Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse – RSD II: Possibilities & Practices of Systemic Design

The Edmonton Shift Lab had an opportunity to share the groundbreaking work they are doing in social innovation, anti-racism and creating equity with systemic design theorists and practitioners from around the world at the RSD 11 Symposium: Possibilities & Practises of Systemic Design. This involved sharing the work of their prototypes, including the Exploring Wahkohtowin Treaty boardgame. The hope is that the event will bring new insights to their work and allow them to share and possibly even commercialize some of the “prototypes” that have been developed.

Sameer Singh – RSD II: Possibilities & Practices of Systemic Design

The Edmonton Shift Lab had an opportunity to share the ground-breaking work they are doing in social innovation, anti-racism and creating equity with systemic design theorists and practitioners from around the world at the RSD 11 Symposium: Possibilities & Practises of Systemic Design. This included sharing the work of Indigenous innovation that Singh’s colleague, Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse, is doing across Canada.

Miranda Jimmy – BC Museums Association & Heritage BC Joint Conference Act II

This grant was for travel costs to participate in the BC Museums Association & Heritage BC Joint Conference Act II in Victoria, BC. The conference brought together Indigenous Knowledge Keepers, heritage practitioners, and museum professionals with a focus on leadership, redress, and the responsibilities of cultural heritage institutions. Through active participation in conference planning and delivery, Edmonton-focused stories on sites of consciousness, commemoration, and reconciliation within the heritage sector were shared.

Late 2022 Heritage Community Investment Program (HCIP) recipients: Project Accelerator (Next application deadline March 15)

John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights – Creating Dignity: Shifting Narratives through Public Art, Popular Theatre and Storytelling

Building off the success of past collaborative work with the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights (JHC) through the Paint the Rails project, this work will bring together diverse artists to create mural panels that tell the stories of the land on which Edmonton is situated from the perspective of their own communities. JHC’s goal with this project is to build a team of emerging artists representing diversity in gender, orientation, ability, race and ethnicity, thus representing a wide diversity of community members. A series of three sessions will root the team, providing them space to build solidarity and share their perspectives of the natural world’s significance to Edmonton’s history and present, while creating a beautiful art piece that will place the pedway on the map in Edmonton. 

Azimuth Theatre – In Process Podcast Season 2: Festival Series

Funds will be distributed to professionals involved in the production of the In Process Podcast Season 2, a key project of the Traversing the Azimuth Multimedia Branch initiative. The “Festival Series” incorporates select episodes of the season recorded live at Edmonton’s many festivals and community events. This work aims to garner a larger audience and create reciprocal relationships with companies, producing bodies, and individual artists across the city. The conversations all share a common theme of process, positionality, and heritage with each artist bringing a different take for each episode.

Institute of African Advancement – Africa Families Migration Succession 

African Families’ Migration Succession is a project designed to collect migration stories of people of African descent through recorded conversation, interviews including oral history that will be digitalized and produced for the purpose of documenting and preserving the migration succession journey of African families from the period of 2000 to 2022 to Edmonton. The project will work to increase understanding between present and future generations by recognizing, understanding, and tracking ancestry to promote a greater knowledge of and respect for the diverse heritage, culture, and contributions of people of African descent to the development of Edmontonian society.

Alberta Local and International Education Association (ALIEA) – Myrna Kostash Documentary Film Project

ALIEA intends to create a 15-minute interview-based documentary that highlights how Myrna Kostash’s work in journalism and creative nonfiction over the last 50 years has drawn attention to understudied areas of local histories. This includes the multi-layered history of place, specifically Edmonton. This can cover the political and cultural complexity of Ukrainian immigration to Edmonton and Alberta from 1892-post World War II; the history of feminism and the New Left in Canada; and events in Indigenous-settler history, including the Frog Lake Massacre and The Battle at Seven Oaks. ALIEA envisions the documentary exploring narratives within Kostash’s body of work that pertain to the history of Ukrainians and Indigenous-Ukrainian relations in Edmonton and rural Alberta. The documentary will provide general synopses of Kostash’s research through stories that share the history of Edmonton and other areas of rural Alberta with an audience unfamiliar with Kostash’s work.

United Cultures of Canada Association – Celebrating Diversity in Edmonton’s Spiritual Heritage

UCCA will develop a 35–40-page resource on faith centres of minority religions followed by newcomers living in Edmonton. These include Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Ismaili, Bahai, and other religions practiced in Edmonton. The resource will include photographs of the temples, mosques, gurudwaras, and other religious buildings, with an eye to structure, architecture, and building history. Along with the photographs, it will provide a brief introduction to the religion or faith and its followers in Edmonton. The information details will be collected from the organizational head of these religious centres or an expert and corroborated by research. The book will be available on UCCA’s website for review and download. A few printed copies will be used for showcasing the project through partners and at appropriate avenues.

Late 2022 Heritage Community Investment Program (HCIP) recipients: Research & Planning (Next application deadline March 15)

Tyson Boyce and Colette Bachand – Documenting Mural Stories in Old Strathcona

The project team noticed that while the location and artists of Old Strathcona murals are readily available, the stories and meanings of each mural are not really known. This project will document and share those stories before they are lost. This would be accomplished by interviewing artists responsible and those who commissioned each artwork as a precursor to creating mediums in which to tell those stories (books, websites, plaques) in a future project. As part of the research process, the team will also conduct outreach to existing mural proponents and identify new ones to ascertain their interest in helping share the stories we document. 

Bellevue Community League – Building Community Through Arts and Heritage

The focus of this study will be to identify the conservation needs of the Bellevue Community Centre, preparing priorities for community support through engagement strategies. The restoration and repairs in conjunction with designation as a municipal historic resource will be available when BCL has secured the needed community support. BCL hopes to utilize a micro-campaign to poll the community and engage the plan to share the questions and concerns of the conservation plan. This study will help BCL learn about how neighborhoods are reflecting on their built environment.

Société historique francophone de l’Alberta – Édifice La Survivance 

Édifice La Survivance (10010 109 St NW) is the original Edmonton Francophone community centre (est. 1930) in the original French Quarter of Edmonton (South Oliver), which includes the Hôpital Général, St. Joachim Parish, LeMarchand Mansion, to name but a few Franco-Albertan landmarks in that neighbourhood. It housed the Association canadienne-française de l’Alberta (est. 1926), the near centenarian political spokes-organization for the provincial Franco-Albertan community, the near centenarian provincial Francophone newspaper Le Franco (est. 1928) and printing press, as well as the original radio station, CHFA, (est. 1949), which would become French CBC in 1976. Despite its historical significance, it is a relatively unknown and poorly maintained building; it is not on the City of Edmonton’s inventory of historic resources. This project seeks to document the history of the people and civic organizations that worked in the Édifice La Survivance.