Tomorrow evening we are welcoming viaSport BC to the museum along with four female panelists for our Game On! Women in Sport event. As our archivist mentioned in a previous blog post, this is somewhat of an unusual event for the museum. Yet these types of events are very relevant to the work of museums today.
One of the newspaper clippings I found while searching for articles covering women in sports. Chilliwack Progress Newspaper Clipping, November 1, 1928 page 8.
I’m very excited that we were able to make the connection with viaSport to host such a great event for our community. History is a living part of who we are, it has shaped the way we live, how we communicate with each other, and even how we go forward into the future. Understanding our past helps us better understand our present, in order to better shape the future. This is exactly what Game On! Women in Sport is all about. We’ll be shining a light on the achievements of women athletes in the past, looking at how far women have come in sports today and talking about goals and dreams for women in sport in the future. What would this event look like 50 years from now? What memorabilia, stories, artifacts, newspaper articles would tell the story of women in sport then?
Hosting an event like this inevitably sparks interesting conversation, even before the event has occurred. Over the last few weeks, I’ve had great conversations about not only women in sports but the history of sports in general with museum volunteers, journalists, athletes and so on. I’ve learned about style guides for journalists which describe appropriate language for writing about women athletes, I’ve heard stories of frustration when facing sexism in the sports world, and I’ve learned a lot about the importance of leveling the field in sports from our viaSport partners.
As I go forward with planning for the next year of events here at the museum, I’ll look to find opportunities like this one to build on the stories our exhibits start to tell and to spark conversations which are relevant not only today but for the future as well. History is not only important to learn about in order to understand our past, but it helps inform our actions as we look towards the future.
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