In an effort to document life during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Glenbow Museum is asking residents of Airdrie and Rocky View County (RVC) to share their personal experiences.
As part of its Dear Glenbow project, the museum is collecting letters, drawings, postcards and emails that illustrate what living through the pandemic was like.
“We wanted to make sure the history we’re recording is told in the voices of the people who are experiencing it,” said Jenny Conway Fisher, Glenbow Museum’s manager of marketing and communications.
Although the pandemic has been a shared experience in many ways, Conway Fisher said the museum wants to know how Albertans have faced it on an individual level.
“We’re living through a historic moment and it’s impacting everyone, yet everyone is having a different experience,” she said. “We’re offering an opportunity for history to be remembered and recorded from a wider perspective.”
Items collected for the Dear Glenbow project will become a permanent part of the museum’s collection, Conway Fisher said, and will be treated like any other artifact.
“Whether it’s two months from now or two years from now or 200 years from now, these letters will be preserved for however people choose to engage with them,” she said.
Conway Fisher said the museum is interested in collecting items that tell the genuine experience of living through a pandemic, and big, dramatic moments are not necessarily what they’re looking for in the letters. Rather, they are interested in reading how people’s lives have changed, what’s become important to them, what their worries are, and what they hope society remembers.
While Glenbow Museum is located in Calgary, Conway Fisher added she hopes to collect items from people living outside the city in communities like Airdrie and RVC, so the project represents a diversity of voices across Alberta.
"The more people that share their stories with us, the richer this resource will be," Conway Fisher said. “I want to make sure we’re capturing the rural experience because that’s going to be utterly different as well, and the Indigenous experience.”
She added she also would like to see more letters from frontline and healthcare workers.
Since the project began in May, Glenbow Museum has received more than 300 letters from a wide variety of viewpoints, she said.
“There have been some really thoughtful responses from kids,” Conway Fisher said. “A lot of them are really thoughtful about what they think this means for them and their families, friends and culture.”
Conway Fisher described the items that have been collected as funny, considerate and caring, and said they will accept anything “as long as it can fit in an envelope or be sent digitally.”
Like other pieces of history, Conway Fisher hopes the letters will inspire new initiatives, artwork, and research.
The deadline to submit a letter is July 31, and question prompts for letter ideas can be found at glenbow.org/programs/dear-glenbow/
Kate F. Mackenzie, AirdrieToday.com
Follow me on Twitter @katefmack
