Ukrainian Culture at the
The Peter and Doris Kule Centre for Ukrainian
and Canadian Folklore participated in the Edmonton Heritage Festival (August
2-4) for the third consecutive year.
This festival has pavilions representing sixty-two countries where
people can showcase their culture and sell crafts and food. The pavilions represent the ethnic
backgrounds of people living in
Peter Holloway, member of the
Kule Centre, assisted by undergraduate Yanina Vihovska were present for the
three days of the festival. Their
mission was to use digital technologies to showcase the work of the Kule
Folklore Centre and to familiarize people with the resources that the Centre
has made available. They ran a DVD
player with a video explaining “What is Folklore?” The major objective of their display was to
demonstrate two major folklore web sites: Ukrainian Traditional Folklore
(www.ualberta.ca/uvp/) and (Ukrainian Bilingual Education)
(www.ualberta.ca/Shkola/). Both of these
were produced and are maintained by the Kule Centre. Holloway and Vihovska pointed out the
world-wide popularity of these two web sites by showing access statistics. They also demonstrated the 3D-Virtual
Reality, video, photographic and sound-file content of the two sites. Holloway said he was particularly touched by
the wonder expressed by the Edmontonians of Ukrainian heritage when the
searchable sound-file content of the uvp site was demonstrated
(http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/uvp/pages/verbalpage.htm). Also popular were the Virtual Reality tours
of churches in
During the three day event
other students came by to help by staffing the display. Graduate student Svitlana Kukharenko and
undergraduate Olesya Rud’ manned the display and answered visitor
questions.
Ukrainian Pavilion housed
many exhibits in addition to the one produced by the Kule Folklore Centre. Other exhibitors showed pysanky, dolls in
regional costumes, korovai decorations, decorations made of rye straw,
embroidery, and other crafts. There was
a live weaving demonstration and informational exhibits dealing with genealogy
and with grave stones markings, among others.
Throughout the day Ukrainian
dance and Ukrainian music were displayed on stage. As always, the food sales
were brisk and pirohy completely ran out Sunday. The food was prepared and served by dozens of
volunteers, among them graduate student Oksana Babenko. The attendance at the three day festival was
approximately 350,000 and Holloway commented that his impression was that ALL
of them had been through the Ukrainian Pavilion.