{"id":26386,"date":"2020-04-16T15:21:35","date_gmt":"2020-04-16T19:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26386"},"modified":"2020-04-16T15:21:44","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T19:21:44","slug":"museum-goes-digital-to-chart-aurora-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/museum-goes-digital-to-chart-aurora-at-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Museum goes digital to chart Aurora at Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Your home is your castle, especially in a time of\nquarantine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It might be hard for us to get used to for the time\nbeing, but it is nothing new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From photography\u2019s earliest days, the home was often the\nbackdrop for important milestones immortalized by this newfangled technology,\nbut everything old is new again at the Aurora Museum & Archives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Church Street School remains closed to the public\nin response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Aurora Museum & Archives has gone\ndigital, launching their new Aurora At Home Initiative, a new social media\ncampaign that has its roots in tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have adapted this project from our 2017 Snapshot\nAurora campaign,\u201d explains Michelle Johnson of the Aurora Museum &\nArchives. \u201cWe have a huge collection of photos in our archive that show people\non their front porches, on their front lawns, posing for a portrait. Some are\nformal, some are very informal, but they highlight the house and their outdoor\nliving space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis neat phenomenon happened around the\nturn-of-the-century when photography became more accessible to the masses and\ntechnology developed so people could try their hand at being amateur\nphotographers. They didn\u2019t have to go to a studio and, for various reasons,\nthey took their photos outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe thought this was an ideal time to encourage\npresent-day Aurorans to try their hand at the same thing. It isn\u2019t a new\nactivity and we have quite a precedent for it in our collection, but now this\nserves two purposes: it is something to do \u2013 and everyone is looking for\nsomething to do right now \u2013 and it is a way for a family or a person to kind of\ndocument this moment, their experience during the self-isolation aspect of\nCOVID-19, and it helps the Museum to document this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has almost become clich\u00e9 to say the times we\u2019re\ncurrently living in are unprecedented but, in many ways, it is an undeniable\nreality. It is a moment in our collective history, and one the Aurora Museum\n& Archives wants to preserve for posterity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe continue collecting right up to the current day and\ndocumenting this pandemic through an Aurora lens is part of our mission and our\nmandate,\u201d says Ms. Johnson. \u201cWe need to find a way to have either digital or\nphysical artefacts from this in our collection so we can do our part for future\ngenerations and show how Aurorans navigated this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These artefacts can include the colourful lawn and window\nsigns Aurorans have erected in a show of solidarity with our frontline\nhealthcare workers, to the festive decorations residents used to fill their\nwindows for the Town\u2019s Easter Window Decorating contest this past weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, until it is safe to collect those items or accept\ndonations, the Museum is focused on the digital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have a front porch or yard, the Museum encourages\nyou to snap away and submit your photos to them via social media through the\nhashtag #auroraathome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As not everyone has access to an outdoor living space,\nphotos by your front door, or even inside for those who do not feel comfortable\ngoing outside at this time, are acceptable as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRight now, what this project is capturing for us, is the\ncommunity practicing physical distancing and the community in that moment of\nself-isolation with the household members,\u201d says Ms. Johnson. \u201cThis can be a\nphoto of you and your household members, your own bubble, you and your pet \u2013 or\neven your collection of vintage video games you\u2019re playing obsessively.\nWhatever speaks to you in terms of how you\u2019re navigating this new reality of physical\ndistancing and staying at home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurora\u2019s archives are a \u201ctreasure trove\u201d of content, but\nsome photos in the collection don\u2019t have any context. Studio portraits, for\ninstance, have been donated without any information of who is in the photo or\nthe circumstances in which they were taken. But the Museum is putting these\nimages to good use, posting them online for a \u201cWriting Prompt Wednesday\u201d\nencouraging community members to use their imaginations to create short\nnarratives on the stories behind the photos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt can be as long or as short as people would like, and\nwe\u2019re encouraging people to tag the Town\u2019s social media accounts if they are\ncomfortable posting it online \u2013 and we can hopefully showcase some of these\nliterary creations down the road and get people\u2019s imaginations going,\u201d says Ms.\nJohnson. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to inundate the public, but we want to promote these\nsimple and neat activities that are open to people of all ages and all\ndemographics. If people don\u2019t use social media, email is always an option as\nwell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on the Aurora Museum and Archives, visit Auroramuseum.ca. Photo entries can be made by connecting with the Town on Facebook @townofaurora and Twitter @Town_of_Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Your home is your castle, especially in a time of quarantine. It might be hard for us to get used to for the time being, but it is nothing new. From photography\u2019s earliest days, the home was often the backdrop for important milestones immortalized by this newfangled technology, but everything old is new again at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/2020-04-16-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6RA","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-13 11:54:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}