Add to the collaborative Root Cellars of Newfoundland and Labrador Map!

We are just launching our collaborative Root Cellar Mapping Project! Do you know where there is a root cellar, somewhere in Newfoundland and Labrador?

Map it!  You'll need to be logged in to your Google account to add a spot on the map, which is at:

http://tinyurl.com/rootcellarmap

If possible, we'll visit your root cellar in person and add it to the digital root cellar we are building as part of Memorial University's Digital Archive Initiative. Got a memory about a root cellar that no longer exists? Map that too!

Rules are simple:

* Root cellars only
* Don't move other people's pins
* Don't be a jerk

We'll delete anything that we feel doesn't fit.

Once you are looking at the map, hit the "Edit" button, which should be visible if you are logged in to your Google Account. Select the blue pin from the menu. Stick it where your root cellar is (or was) and tell us about it.

Who wants to build a traditional Newfoundland punt?

Have you ever looked out at the ocean on a calm day and thought "wow I wish I had a boat". Then now is your opportunity to learn how to build a traditional Newfoundland punt.

The Wooden Boat Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador will be offering a Boat Building Course in Winterton this summer from July 9th – August 27th. The course will consist of 8 workshops.

Workshop #1 The Backbone: Shaping the Stem and Keel
Workshop #2 The Backbone: Connecting the Stem to Keel
Workshop #3 The Backbone: Shaping the Counter
Workshop #4 The Backbone: Connecting the Counter to Keel
Workshop #5 Setup and Frames
Workshop #6 Planking – Putting on the Shear Plank
Workshop #7 Planking – Putting on the Garboard Plank
Workshop #8 Planking – Filling in the Hull

Workshop #1 will be begin on Saturday, July 9, 2011, and run each Saturday until August 27, 2011.

Cost per workshop is $60.00. Members receive a 10% discount.

Participants can register for the entire 8 weeks or individual sessions. For further information or to
register, please call 709-583-2070 or email bkingheritage@gmail.com. Pre-registration is required.

Exploring and learning about the oral tradition - Workshop July 16

Explore the skills needed to begin your own storytelling journey: story selection, rehearsal methods and visualization techniques, gestures and body language, stage presence and more! You will be encouraged to “put the book down,” and begin to tell!

No storytelling experience is required, just a willingness to learn and play in this supportive and fun environment. If you consider yourself to be an intermediate storyteller, please join us as well. An extensive handout will assist participants in continuing their work the class.

If you are an educator this workshop is for you as well. Storytelling increases self-esteem and self-confidence and enhances self-expression. It is an interdisciplinary tool, introducing them to literature and folklore of all cultures, promotes writing and provides a rich environment for different learning styles.

Please join Professional Storyteller Karen Chace for this fun and interactive workshop at Gower Street United Church Hall (downstairs) on Saturday, July 16th, 2011at 1 pm – 4 pm. Open the door and step into a world full of stories! Who knows, you just might share a tale before you leave!

The workshop will be conducted by Massachusetts storyteller Karen Chace. When she isn’t telling stories Karen is teaching others to share their own. A workshop leader and author she writes for Storytelling Magazine as well as her own blog and newsletter with resources for storytellers and educators. She is also a contributing author to the National Storytelling Network’s publications, A Beginner's Guide to Storytelling and Telling Stories to Children and offers her own publication, Story by Story – Building a School Storytelling Troupe. She is the recipient of the 2009 Brother Blue-Ruth Hill Award and the 2011 National Storytelling Networks Oracle Award for Service and Leadership in the Northeast (USA). Please visit her website at http://www.storybug.net

Admission: $20 

Pre-register at: storytelling@nf.sympatico.ca
Perfect For: Educators, Librarians, Students and Adults 
interested in exploring and learning the art of Oral Tradition

Call for Volunteers: Summer Folklore Fieldwork Opportunity

The West End Oral History and Folklife Festival is being offered as part of the ICH office’s 3rd Annual Folklife Festival and will be held in two sessions: during the day on Wednesday, August 17th and on Saturday afternoon, evening and night, August 20th.

The theme of this year’s ICH Festival is “Seeds to Supper” an homage to agri-culture and education in food sustainability in Newfoundland Labrador. The West End festival seeks to present agricultural history in urban neighbourhoods in St. John’s. The geographic focus is from the Memorial to Tommy Ricketts on Water Street west to the ‘Crossroad’s, the location where Water Street west, Waterford bridge Road and Topsail Roads converge. The site goes north primarily from the bottom of Patrick Street to Wesleyan United Church on Hamilton Avenue (at Patrick St.), west past Victoria Park, Hamilton Hall (the CEI Club) and then to the Laurier Club at the top of the street. This neighbourhood was once the industrial heartland of the city as well as a farming region prior to that. Currently there are about 30 businesses in the area including a music store, lettuce farm, Pennecon, the Labatt’s Brewery and one of the oldest businesses in the city, not to mention the lovely Victoria Park, perhaps best known currently as the home of the Lantern Festival, held every year in the summer.

All Folklore graduate students and upper classmen who require practical ethnographic experience for their degree and diploma programs are welcome to participate in a volunteer capacity to carry out original fieldwork in a supervised community setting. Students may also volunteer to become festival administrators, presenters and programmers. A ‘buddy system’ and team structure will be engaged.

Options for fieldwork include occupational and labour folklife, the dockyards, the rail yards, folk art and music; old farms once right off Water Street; food sustainability for urban residents; river management in Victoria Park; and the history of the CEI Club. This building is turning into condominiums so opportunities abound for the analysis of the gentrification of the neighbourhood. Interest in children’s folklore past and present is welcome, as is the contemporary impact of the lack of children in the locale. Anyone interested in working with senior citizens on any topic should consider this opportunity to carry out original, independent field work. Finally, histories of Victoria Park, along with folklore of the park are also welcome.

Field work will officially start after Canada Day and will conclude with the festival dates. Students who wish to volunteer to conduct festival programming are welcome as well. Ultimately, the festival will be a place where students can, if they choose, apply their fieldwork for common good. If you wish, you can do as much fieldwork as you can fit into July month. Technical equipment is not necessary to participate in this project. The only requirement for the project is a brief essay summarizing your fieldwork and suggestions for additional fieldwork (4-5 pages). This essay must be completed by the festival date (August 17th).

Folklorist Kathryn Foley, MA (Memorial Folklore 1987), has experience in the public sector from 1987-1994 in New York State and Pennsylvania. She has edited and written curricula, managed the field office for a graduate student institute in oral history; taught ethnography and oral history to ninth graders and has extensive communication and networking skills. Folk art is a specialization. Additional information is available on her profile on the website, Linked In. Students will be provided with a Certificate of Participation as well as a reference letter upon request.

email only: kathrynfoley47@yahoo.ca.

Newfoundland Set Dancing and Percussive Dance Workshops

From Wednesday July 13th through to Tuesday July 19th there will be DAILY opportunities to participate in an exciting variety of dance workshops at the Sound Shift Festival
http://www.mun.ca/ictm2011/festival.htm

Workshops are listed at: http://www.mun.ca/ictm2011/festival_workshops.htm.
Ticket prices at: http://www.mun.ca/ictm2011/festival_tickets.htm

(Purchase at door, cash only)
$10.00 / Regular, per workshop
$8.00 / Students/Seniors, per workshop
$20.00 / Regular, 3-workshop pass
$15 / Students/Seniors, 3-workshop pass

Thursday July 14 from 1:30 to 3 p.m. at the MMAP Gallery at the Arts and Culture Centre, Jane Rutherford will be leading a workshop in Newfoundland Set Dancing, accompanied by Christina Smith

Tuesday July 19th from 1:30 pm - 3:0 pm, also at the MMAP Gallery at the Arts and Culture Centre,
Kristin Harris Walsh will be leading a workshop in Percussive Dance , accompanied by Stan Pickett

You, Your Town & Tourism Workshop in Carbonear

You are invited to attend a one-day workshop that will leave you with a passport to explore this spectacular historical region of the province.

You’ll learn more about the culture, history, heritage and natural beauty of the region.
When: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 8:30 am – 3:00 pm Where: Lecture Theater at College of the North Atlantic, Carbonear Campus

To Register call: 709 596 8957
Free admission.
Lunch and nutritional breaks compliments of the Town of Bay Roberts and Department of Tourism.

Root Cellar Typology for Newfoundland and Labrador

We are digging away on our root cellar project, documenting different root cellars, taking photographs, making measurements, and interviewing people about root cellar traditions.

One idea we've come up with is to create a map of root cellars across the province, to see what kind of root cellars are most common where. So, I've taken a first stab at creating a root cellar typology, listing out the different kinds of root cellars we've found to date.

If you know of a different kind, or have a suggestion for a root cellar for us to look at, or root cellar owner to interview, contact Crystal Braye, our down-to-earth folklore co-op student, at folklore.coop@gmail.com.

Dual Entrance Cellar - set into the ground and lined with rocks/concrete. A shed is built over top of the cellar, with its own door. Access to the cellar is through a ground-level door into the cellar, and through a hatch door incorporated into the floor of the shed.

Hatch and Shed Cellar - set into the ground and lined with rocks/concrete. Beams and planks are laid over the hole, with a hatch door incorporated into the ceiling/floor, along with a ladder for access. A shed is then built over the top of the cellar.

Hillside Cellar - dug out of a hillside, lined with rocks or concrete, and then a ceiling is attached to overhead beams. Access through a ground-level door on the front.

Above Ground Cellar - freestanding cellar, covered thickly with sod on the outside, lined inside with rocks/concrete, with access through a ground-level door on the front.

Above Ground Hatch – like the Above Ground Cellar, but with access from a hatch at the top.

Walk-in Cool Room – Insulated room, part of a house or outbuilding.

Barrel Cellar – A small root cellar made of a converted barrel or drum.

Unidentified Ruin

Others?

Ghost stories and legends from Cape Broyle, Bell Island and Grand Falls-Windsor

I posted a few of the stories recorded by participants in our Young Folklorists Program yesterday. Here are three more, with tales from Cape Broyle on the Southern Shore, Bell Island in Conception Bay, and Grand Falls-Windsor in Central Newfoundland.

Stacey Challinor, Baltimore School - The Legend of Peggy's Hollow


Nicole Doyle, St. Michael's Regional High - A Bell Island Ghost Story


Tayler French, St. Peter's Junior High - The Phantom of the Arts and Culture Centre

Supernatural Stories from the Young Folklorist Program

Earlier this spring, the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador hosted its first Young Folklorists Program. Students spent two days learning about local folklore, doing interviews along Water Street, and researching and learning local stories.

The students chose to work on superstitions and ghost stories, and each student recorded their story on the second day of the workshop.  All of them will be added to our oral traditions collection as part of the ICH Inventory. Here are the first three!  I'll put out a notice when the rest are uploaded to the Inventory.


Amanda Brace, St Peter's Junior High - A ghost story from Victoria Street


Ashley Brace, St. Peter's Junior High - Phantom fires in St. John's

Emma Burry, Leary's Brook Jr. High - The Sunshine Park Killer - An Urban Legend