CANMORE – The Canmore Museum is hosting the Soil Superheroes exhibit – a travelling exhibit curated by Ingenium – which explores the world underneath your feet, giving an in-depth explanation to why soil is important for the quality of life.
The superheroes – like Captain Clay, Fabulous Fungus, or Professor Leaf – play cartoon-like roles to make understanding soil health easier. The exhibit features large panels of information with diagrams and interactive sections. There are also two three-dimensional mock terrariums that showcase the theme further.
“The superheroes are the different elements of soil – so Captain Clay, The Mole, Wonder Worm – there's a bunch of others, and their superpowers provide humans with food and medicine and then it cleans the soil protects the climate,” said Sarah Fletcher, Canmore Museum programs and outreach coordinator.
The exhibit held an opening reception at the Canmore Museum on Feb. 3 and will be available for viewing until May 20.
The exhibit can come in handy for volunteers of community gardens who want to further their soil’s health.
“It’s important because there's lots of community gardens around the area. We run one at the barracks during the summer and all that food gets donated to the food bank. There's a couple other community gardens in the Bow Valley and it’s all dependent on the soil health,” said Fletcher. “Sometimes gardening and growing fruits and veggies in the Bow Valley is difficult because of the types of soil that we have here.”
Not only does healthy soil help grow food but it also affects climate, cleans water and provides medicine which is colourfully explained by the exhibit.
“I think there’s lots to learn for anyone in the community. We’ve had plenty of people that are studying soil in university that said they learned some new things as well or saw things in a different light,” said Fletcher.
This is the first time the Canmore Museum has brought a travelling exhibition to their space and have been hearing positive feedback from patrons.
“A lot of people have commented that it’s not something they’d expect coming to the Canmore Museum because for years and years, we’ve had a very static exhibit just on the whole mining history. We’re excited to just show people the different ways that this space can be used,” said Fletcher.
In relation to the exhibition, the Canmore Museum and the Canmore Public Library hosted two events with one more to go.
On April 18 at 7 p.m., the Bow Valley Food Alliance will be hosting a workshop and guide tour of the exhibit at the Canmore Museum.
The first program, called The Better Brain, was a book talk with author Bonnie Kaplan, which was hosted at the museum on March 15.
That was followed by the Canmore Library's Earth Talk, where Agrologist Shannon Ripley presented the process of composting on March 18.
