Poeming with Practitioners
By Mary Pinkoski
A Sensory Poetry Activity conducted during an arts-based workshop with the staff of the Musée Héritage Museum in St. Albert.
What does pioneer smell like? Sweat and body odour.
What does community taste like? Bannock and communion wafers.
What does pioneer look like? Dust settling everywhere.
What does community feel like? Wâhkôhtowin.
What does pioneer sound like? A school bell ringing, a farm machine running, wood chopping, a language that you do not yet speak.
These were some of the questions and responses that began our arts workshops with museum practitioners at each of our research sites: Camrose and District Museum, the John Walter Museum (Edmonton), the Wadey Centre (Blackfalds), and the St. Albert Musée Héritage Museum.
As part of the Unsettling Pioneer Museums in Alberta research project, we planned and facilitated arts-based workshops at each of the research sites. Through these workshops, we used creative arts activities in order to think through the concepts “pioneer” and “community.” Each of the workshops contained a series of activities that included: collage, sensory poetry, creative defining, and writing a found poem. We concluded each workshop with a conversation that explored what we had uncovered together. Our workshop participants were museum staff, volunteers, and board members.
Collage created by volunteers and staff of the Camrose and District Centennial Museum during an arts-based workshop.
As we embarked on these workshops, we recognized that to do this form of critical work requires a certain bravery. Disruptive work specifically calls on us to confront our own biases, the routines of our workplaces, and sometimes complacency towards change. It is precisely for this reason that we recognized the power of arts-based work to facilitate this labour. The power of creating poetry with participants and the subsequent conversations provided a value that brought to life the practice of unsettling a museum narrative.
The workshops provided us with a low-risk way to explore where (and how) participants’ understandings were replicated in the museum and where (and how) they were not. Participants gently asked others why they chose particular images for their collages. They laughed alongside each other as we talked about what artifacts smelled, sounded, tasted, looked, and felt like. Innovative and evolving definitions of pioneer and community were brainstormed. Participants shared their hopes and frustrations when they looked exhibits and labels. And, most importantly they dreamed new possibilities for their museum spaces in found poems.
Our time together was a way for participants to creatively add their voices to the visible and not-so-visible narratives in the museum spaces where they worked. With each workshop, the complexities of participants’ experiences and identities entwined with and diverged from each other. Each session became a space for participants to not only connect with their colleagues, but also to take ownership of the stories they were and are telling within the museum. And, every collage, every poem, and every conversation became a place of unsettling.
We invite you to explore and use our arts-based workshop resources to hold your own creative sessions at your museum.
Texts from the Explore the Museum Activity, the Defining Pioneer Activity, and the Found Poetry Activity created during an arts-based workshop at the Wadey Centre with volunteers and staff of the Blackfalds Historical Society and the Lacombe Museum.
