Heritage Winnipeg is excited to be mentoring two students from the Met Centre for Arts & Technology in the Exchange District for the 2022-2023 school year. We believe that engaging with youth in a thought provoking manner will unveil new perspectives on built heritage issues and foster the next generation of advocates. Make sure to mark May 28th on your calendar so you can come check out their project at the Millennium Centre during Doors Open Winnipeg 2023!

Hello we are Gabe and Nahum and we are Met School students and we are working on an event for Heritage Winnipeg. But what is a Met School? Why are some random teenagers creating and running a big event downtown for a corporation?

To begin with, is a Met School a special type of school? Met Schools are high schools that combine challenging academic work and real-world learning and internships. The Met Schools work with community partners, businesses, professionals, and organizations to provide opportunities for students to explore their interests and career goals directly with mentors in the real world. The Met Schools utilize the “one student at a time philosophy” based on the premise that students learn best when they are doing something they are passionate about in the real world and actively participating in their education.

As Met students we had the opportunity to pursue our interests in history through our internship program. We met with Heritage Winnipeg and began working on an event at the Millennium Centre focusing on multiculturalism, architecture sustainability, and downtown Winnipeg’s history. The Millennium Centre represents a very important development in the heritage community of Winnipeg.

The purpose of this event is to educate and engage the community on Winnipeg’s heritage and create a discussion on it. The main reason for this is that most people ignore or are unaware of the history of their city and the buildings they walk around in everyday life.

As you can see this event focuses a lot on heritage, more specifically it focuses on the term “heritage for all”. The heritage aspect speaks to culture, ancestry, and the beliefs you hold. It speaks to the understanding and preservation of ideas and traditions.

The “for all” aspect speaks to the importance of the preservation of our heritage and how we should learn from our heritage and think critically about why it is important and what we can gain from understanding it. For instance, in Winnipeg, this could mean the 1919 General Strike and how it affects Winnipeg to this day. Combining both aspects of this term leads us to think about how history affects everything.

The more we know about things that have happened in the past, the more we can apply the previous knowledge to what is happening today and even what could happen.

We look forward to seeing you at the event!

Sincerely,
Gabe and Nahum