Participants choose photos, documents and objects for the exhibition

Writing and sharing personal work histories

The literacy project of the Écomusée du fier monde and Atelier des lettres

by Lucie Bonnier, Project Coordinator

The Centre-sud district is one of Montréal's oldest working-class neighbourhoods. Today, local residents have a high rate of unemployment (17%) and limited education. The Écomusée focuses on the themes of industry, work and culture and is very interested in involving local residents and organizations in its activities. In 1990, it published a research method, "Exposer son histoire" (sharing personal work histories), to allow groups to research the history of their companies, jobs or communities and share their efforts, usually as part of an exhibition. The Atelier des lettres, for its part, is a community-based literacy group that has been working in the Centre-sud district for the past 14 years. It emphasizes participants' day-to-day lives and experiences through a global approach that links literacy with self-expression.

The Écomusée du fier monde and the Atelier des lettres became partners in January 1999 to produce an exhibition as part of the "Reading the Museum" program. The project's main goal was to develop the museum as a useful literacy resource. We concentrated on adapting historical research and exhibition design tools and emphasized learning through reading and writing. The method used was the one outlined in "Exposer son histoire".

Even before the group was formed, we decided that the theme of the exhibition would be work, as it was general enough to enable us to reach a wide range of participants. The adventure truly got off the ground in February 1999. For literacy learners, just visiting a museum is already an exploit, so producing an exhibition is a major challenge. To start with, the Écomusée organized a tour of the museum for learners from the Atelier des lettres, to give them a chance to find out what an exhibition is and to see how objects, photographs and documents can be used to visually tell a story. At the end of the tour, four enthusiastic individuals decided to participate in the project.

Exhibiton: Literacy and work Mr Chiasson's section on his experience working in a foundry

The four participants were men aged 20 to 60, all of whom had worked at various trades and in a factory or public utility. They were joined by the activities coordinator from the Écomusée and a trainer from the Atelier des lettres. We met about once a week for five months. At our meetings, we decided on the individual work experiences that each person would share in the exhibition, agreed on a timetable, divided up the work, made progress reports, prepared the exhibition script and planned its launch. In between meetings, participants hunted for photographs, drawings and objects illustrating their work experience. We also went to the local library to complete our research. We recorded each participant on video, talking about his work experiences. A professional filmmaker then took the several hours of interview footage and turned it into a video, which was included in the exhibition. We also photographed each stage in the project. In the final weeks before the exhibition opened, we selected objects and photographs, prepared guest lists and invitations for the opening, hung the exhibition and prepared a snack for guests. More than 60 people turned out for the opening on the evening of June 23, 1999. One of the participants from the Atelier des lettres spoke on everyone's behalf, saying how proud we all were of our accomplishment.

The exhibition "Exposer son histoire ABC et travail" is divided into two parts. The first section tells the story of the project in photos. The second section looks at each participant's work experience. To wrap up the exhibition, there is a panel with a comment written by each of the four participants on the connection between literacy and work. The Écomusée will be presenting the "ABC et travail" exhibition again in spring 2000.

This project proves that a museum can be a useful literacy resource. The four participants were very proud of their efforts and gained greater self-confidence, two important assets in the challenging process of learning to read and write. We are now further evaluating this project in order to better adapt our research, communication and design tools for this target clientele by participating in the CMXs comparative research project "The Learning Museum" being supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.