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What’s Happening in the COM-Unity!
Published on December 10, 2020
COM-Unity is shining a spotlight on the vitality and multi-layered lives of Quebec’s diverse English-speaking community. The six different partners have so much in store with their upcoming projects. This blog post takes a look at what two of them have been up to!
Y4Y - You are Here: A Next-Gen Approach to Promoting ESQ’s Heritage
Y4Y’s youth cultural ambassadors have been busy bringing their latest project to life in seven regions across the province: the North Shore, the Eastern Townships, Gaspé-Les-Iles, Québec City, Outaouais, Abitibi, and Montréal.
Gaspésie-Les-Iles cultural ambassador Emma is coordinating an activity that will have students use the archives section on the Gaspésie Museum’s website to find images that they feel represent Gaspé and connect to its history. The students will then recreate the historic photos and share them with text that explains the significance of each image.
Quiz nights are always a great way for people to learn an interesting fact or two! Held online due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Eastern Townships ambassador Danika, North Shore Ambassador Honlee and Quebec City Ambassador Michael put the finishing touches on their individual quiz nights including interactive presentations, photos and opportunities to dive deeper into the answers. Quiz participants were able to learn more about these regions and had a chance to win prizes.
Montreal ambassadors Irmak and Rayana were busy programming their Little Burgundy event. The event featured an interview with Dr. Dorothy Williams, a historian and researcher, who has written several books about the history of Blacks in Montreal and numerous articles about being Black in Canada. Her company, Blacbiblio.com, Inc. has created educational resources for teachers and schools as a response to the relative absence of Black stories in many history curricula. The event also featured a memoryscape from the Black Community Resource Centre (an interactive map that has pin dropped stories from the neighbourhood); and concluded with an audience discussion. They also gave away two copies of Dr. Williams’s books.
Holly in the Outaouais has met with volunteers at the Pontiac Archives, who walked her through their collections which include over 200 Pontiac family records, veteran records, the Walter Brown collection, and constantly updated family trees. They also have a variety of newspapers, birth, and marriage records. During the Pontiac event, volunteers spoke about their roles at the Archives, explored the family trees, and presented one of their projects entitled ‘Abandoned villages in the Pontiac’.
LEARN - I Belong!
LEARN has come up with three learning opportunities as part of their I Belong project. The one we’re looking at today is a digital storytelling project with support from Hands On Media Education, digital media experts. The project began by asking students what community and belonging mean to them. What types of communities do they belong to, from family to friends to school, neighbourhoods, town or city, and what is their relationship with these communities? Hands On Media wanted to hear how students feel about belonging to different groups.
Once the students had a clear idea of what they wanted to say, they created a Storyboard where their thoughts were turned into a script and image layout. Next up they will take photos with guidance from Hands On Media to help visually bring their story to life, then record their voices, add music and edit to weave their images, voice, music and text together into the final Digital Story project.
The project will conclude with students sharing their work in screenings across the province for their teachers and peers, with the potential for them to be shared online with a wider audience. Watch this space!
What’s next?
These events are just the beginning and COM-Unity projects will continue to celebrate English-speaking Quebecers and showcase a vibrant, dynamic, English-speaking community with a sense of belonging.
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