Heritage Education - Teaching with Historic Places

Public awareness of the need to conserve Canada’s heritage is a common goal of the Federal/Provincial/Territorial governments. As a partner in Canada’s Historic Places Initiative (HPI), the Province of British Columbia believes that education is essential to achieving this goal. Education and training programs help build community capacity to effectively plan for and implement the conservation of our heritage.

British Columbians, especially teachers and students, need resources that reinforce the importance of heritage conservation in overall community planning and how the HPI provides communities with the necessary tools to achieve this. By working with educators, we have produced classroom resources that introduce Social Studies students to heritage conservation and the HPI.  Through these resources, secondary school students are discovering the concepts of heritage conservation and heritage planning and how these can be applied to their own communities.

Teachers and students also need resources that will help them to learn research and planning skills as they relate to historic places. The BC Heritage Digital Collections are wonderful tools to discover and learn about British Columbia's history.

The Heritage Branch also liaises with the advanced education community in British Columbia and Canada to ensure that post-secondary programs in community planning, architecture, and design are consistent with the goals of the heritage conservation.