BUILDING KNOWLEDGE & SKILLS
HBC Workshop Program
To build the knowledge and skills of community heritage organizations, Heritage BC provides funding for one day training workshops. Non-profit heritage organizations, community heritage commissions, local governments, and First Nations bands are eligible for assistance.
A maximum of $2,000 is available per award, one award per year. Funds are provided for the professional fee and return travel expenses of a workshop leader. The maximum support for the professional fee is $750. When travel time is extensive, involving an overnight stay for example, there is an additional allowance of up to $250. All other costs are the responsibility of the applicant.
HBC can also provide advice in locating an appropriate workshop leader. Over 70 workshops have been supported around the province in the past eight years, covering topics such as:
- how to get your community heritage program organized
- do's and don't's of heritage home restoration
- historic colour selection
- wood window repair and refurbishing
- creating a heritage register
- heritage tourism
- downtown revitalization
- board development
- strategic planning
The workshop program is financially supported by the Government of British Columbia.
For more information about Heritage BC Workshops, please contact Rick Goodacre
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HERITAGE TOURISM WORKSHOP : TERRACE
Paving the way for
heritage tourism development
Promoting Kitimat’s city centre as a 1950s historic district is one innovative idea to emerge from the Community Heritage Tourism Strategies workshop held in Terrace on October 3, 2008. Louise Avery, curator of Kitimat’s Centennial Museum, has been trying to sell the downtown project for some time. She envisions national historic site designation, Fifties-era shops, classic car rallies and visits by Airstream trailer clubs. Workshop participants, who came from communities across the region, helped Avery fine-tune the steps to turn her plan into reality. “I now have some targets which are doable,” she said.
The one-day workshop, funded by Heritage BC and facilitated by Ursula Pfahler of PODA Comunications, also looked at creating Aboriginal cultural and ecotourism experiences in Kitimat Village and heritage tourism partnership opportunities along the Yellowhead Highway.
Luke Houlden, executive director of Kermodei Tourism, said, “The workshop brought together members of the heritage sector and the tourism industry to start working on projects and build relationships that will continue long after the workshop is over.”
A key outcome was the realization that cross-promotion and pooling resources will benefit individual communities and the region as a whole. For example, overseas visitors are already aware of Northwest BC as an ecotourism and Aboriginal tourism destination, but don’t know about attractions in the region’s towns and cities. Workshop participants identified the lack of infrastructure and tourist services, as well as burnt-out museum and heritage volunteers, as impediments to heritage tourism development in Northwest BC.
Collaboration among the various stakeholders may help overcome these obstacles. Meghan Leschert, Terrace’s Heritage Park Museum curator, said the workshop encouraged participants to “think seriously about regional cooperation and how we can work together for the same cause.”
Contact Ursula Pfahler for information about Heritage Tourism Workshops.
Email: Ursula@podacomm.ca
