School Lore Competition for Estonians in Canada

In December 2020, VEMU started collecting school heritage from people with an Estonian background in Canada. This collection competition is organized in collaboration with the Estonian Literary Museum. The Estonian Literary Museum has previously collected school folklore or school lore in Estonia in 1992, 2007 and 2018.

In Canada, the collection of school lore is taking place for the first time, thus it is all the more important. School pupils will play an important role acknowledging and preserving Estonian culture in diaspora. At the same time, the organizers are eager to get responses not only from present day pupils, but also from adults who wish to reflect back on their school days at the Estonian supplementary school and show comparisons with their experiences at Canadian schools. Having materials from different periods would give a good basis for analyzing changes in the Estonian diaspora school culture.

The material collected will be organized to various subcategories: jokes and anecdotes; fears, beliefs and predictions; important dates and celebrations; free time and friends, games and pastimes.

The collected material will be used for research purposes and possibly also for a publication and exhibit. The collection campaign will take place until May 31, 2021. More info and instructions on how to participate here: www.vemu.ca/index.php/en/