By Ethan Ready

Hands-off learning

An eerie reality for The Exploration Place

Mar 30, 2020 | 3:15 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – A few weeks ago, the gallery would be filled with children.

Now, it’s a completely different reality for CEO Tracy Calogheros and the three remaining staff members who still find themselves coming into the museum each day.

The Exploration Place closed its doors on March 13 in response to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen and I’ve been here for over 26 years,” said Calogheros as she looked around at an empty children’s playground. “For us to be this quiet is just not what we’re all about. It’s bizarre is the word I’ve been using to describe it.”

The museum has a couple of streams that they have no choice but to maintain. For one, the animals that are housed in the Biome of the facility.

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“They need our attention everyday; multiple times a day. Seven days a week there is someone coming into the building to make sure they’re cared for and cleaned up and fed.”

The other is their Class-A status and collections of millions of images and documents, as well as over 400-thousand artefacts. All of them are required to be kept in a Class-A facility, which means the humidity and temperature of the building needs to be maintained, but routine checks of the collections also are needing to be done.

With the shift in routine for all of society, Calogheros says they’ve made an effort to shift a lot of their outreach digitally.

“Tomorrow, you will see a lot of posts going out on Indigenous Languages Day,” she said. “Up until now, we’ve been doing live feedings with our critters on Facebook every day at 10 a.m. We’re starting to see more and more people on that so we’re answering questions as we go.”

She also states they’re sharing a lot of the material that other science centres and museums across the country are posting as a way to continue to educate and share with the public.

“It’s hard to believe it’s only been two weeks since we closed and I’m amazed at how much we’ve managed to connect.”

In the midst of a pandemic, Calogheros is unsure of what the museum may look like when all is said and done.

“We’re all about hands-on and touching things. Our entire industry is looking at what a post-pandemic science centre looks like and we don’t know the answer.”

Despite the uncertainty of the global situation, Calogheros did share her own personal message to the public.

“We will get through this. Absolutely, we’ll get through this and we will do it because we support each other.”