When you think “field trip”, what comes to mind? Where would you go? What will you learn?

Whether you’re an educator, a student, or just someone who’s spent time in an education system in the past, your answers to these questions likely include some reference to a museum.

Museums are spaces where important artifacts and exemplars of culture are preserved, exhibited, explained, and reframed within our ever-changing cultural contexts. As you’d imagine, the work that goes into this can be laboursome, complex, and in many cases quite controversial. Because no culture is homogenous or fixed, it’s hard to select which cultural expressions to highlight, and how to present them so that they educate and enliven those who experience them.

Braemar College is lucky to be located close to the Royal Ontario Museum, where educators like Julie Tomé and Leslie McCue are constantly reimagining how history, science and culture can be made real to those who experience this extraordinary museum space.  

 In our conversation with Julie and Leslie, we get a behind-the-scenes look at the development of educational programs offered at the ROM, from conception to delivery, and get to know the background and motivations of the people who design these programs. We learn about their journeys from passion to professionalism. We discover the difficulties and the joys of confronting our pasts. And we experience the spirit of those who are reshaping historical narratives to help frame new visions for our collective future.

We’re so thankful for the work that people like Julie and Leslie do, and we hope this episode inspires you to think about how public institutions in your area might initiate similar cultural conversations.

If you’d like to learn more about some of the specific ideas discussed in this episode, you can use the links below as a starting point:

Land Acknowledgments

The Indian Act

The First People’s Gallery at the ROM

Being Legendary art exhibit

Kent Monkman lecture

John Ralston Saul –  A Fair Country

• Related Interview
  

21 Things You Didn’t Know about the Indian Act

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Canada

The Potlatch Ban

The Dish-with-One-Spoon Territory

Seek App

The Native-Canadian Centre

Hack the ROM

Hands-On Biodiversity Gallery at ROM

Youth Cabinet

Booking school visits at the ROM