Community Memories Program – Program Guidelines: Program Overview

In creating Community Memories exhibits, museums work with individuals and groups within their communities to explore particular aspects of their local history.  Together, they engage in telling the stories about their community and in doing so, share their personal heritage with others. For the purposes of this program, a community is defined as being a group that shares a common history or interest and that may be situated in a specific location in Canada.

Community Memories exhibits present artefacts in the context of people and places. Individual exhibits should have a clearly defined subject. Examples include the main industry of a particular community, a significant historical event, traditional crafts or ways of life, early settlers, the impact of major world events or the experiences of immigrants. Storylines are also an essential part of an exhibit. It is through the storylines that the museum really gets to tell the community’s story and lead viewers along a specific path through the exhibit.

The exhibit tells a unique story rooted in time and place. It offers a glimpse into the events and the people that shaped a community. Exhibit storylines are an essential component in sharing a community’s story. Like chapters in a book, each storyline is a smaller story of interest under the umbrella of the exhibit

To create a Community Memories exhibit, museums must use the Community Memories software supplied by CHIN without charge. The software can be used to create an unlimited number of individual exhibits. Please note that the software is not a general Web authoring tool and cannot be used to create a Web site. Rather, it is a template specifically structured to ensure a common look and feel for the Community Memories exhibits. To familiarize yourself with the software functions, please consult Community Memories software on the CHIN website. Museums that wish to take a more individual approach to the creation of virtual exhibits, or that are interested in the creating educational content are encouraged to respond to Calls for Proposals from other VMC Investment Programs.

A Community Memories exhibit draws on photographs and documents owned by individuals as well as objects and images that may be owned by the museum itself.  It includes associated audio and text to bring the images to life. Museums may also include brief video clips that help tell the community’s story. The Community Memories software that CHIN supplies to participating institutions makes it easy to integrate the various types of information. The Community Memories software also has features that will enable museums to run a “slide show” of the exhibit for local programming purposes.

The desktop software used to create the Community Memories exhibits cannot be used directly to display the exhibits on the World Wide Web. A special application for this purpose has been developed to run on CHIN’s server, where all Community Memories exhibits will be hosted. Members can present their exhibits as part of their own Web sites, if they wish, through a link to the CHIN server¹. Museums can also publish their own exhibit “Viewer” CD/DVDs which may then be reproduced to sell.

Community Memories exhibits are hosted by CHIN and presented on the VMC Website at:  www.virtualmuseum.ca.  Online visitors are able to view the exhibits individually and are also able to explore themes that are represented across multiple exhibits (e.g. the experiences of farming communities across Canada). Because the Community Memories software uses predefined terms to classify images and documents, these classified elements of Community Memories exhibits are automatically searchable in both English and French.  Participating museums are not required to translate reminiscences or other textual material of their exhibits but may choose to do so to serve a wider audience.

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¹Museums that wish to link their Community Memories exhibit to their own Web sites should contact CHIN to obtain the complete URL.