Antigonish Lego contest brings love of local heritage buildings to new generation

Heritage buildings got the Lego treatment at an event in Antigonish this week.

A contest held by the Antigonish Heritage Museum saw many of the town's historical buildings recreated with the ubiquitous plastic blocks.

The contest culminated in a two-hour display and judging at the museum on Thursday afternoon.

Entries were judged in two age categories.

Maritime Noon guest host Brett Ruskin spoke to Barry MacKenzie, the curator of the museum and a history professor at St. Francis Xavier University, about the event and what inspired it. 

This is a condensed version of their conversation that has been edited for clarity and length.

Can you tell me what inspired you to hold this contest where people recreate these local buildings?

It was a number of things. Most recently it was a contest held in nearby Pictou County co-sponsored by a variety of different organizations including the Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia and the Pictou County Historical Group.

They invited people to recreate historical buildings in Pictou out of gingerbread.

This was a pre-Christmas event and it got me to thinking could we do something similar to this in Antigonish?

And as a lifetime lover of Lego, and with an 11 year old who is virtually obsessed with it, I thought this might be the perfect way to engage young people at our museum and in our community with heritage architecture and get them into the museum. 

So a variety of different things led to it, but we were really, really thrilled with the response.

Who were some of the creators of these Lego recreations?

We had the two separate categories from 12 and under and 13 and above, but the vast majority, with the exception of one of the participants, they were all under 19. So it ranged from five years old to 19.

Some of these folks were very, very new to Antigonish, some folks even new to Canada, and others have long lived in the community and were especially familiar with some of the buildings.

We wanted to bring a whole variety of different new faces to the museum and introduce them to this sort of notion of heritage architecture and how important it is.

Tell me about the architecture of the original buildings and of these recreations. Can you describe the buildings that were replicated and what these creations looked like?

We left the opportunities pretty wide open in terms of what the participants could build. Basically anything that had been built in Antigonish town or county before 1920. But what we saw of course were the most familiar landmarks.

Out of the 15 entries that we received, five of them replicated the local courthouse, which is a national historic site built in 1855.

It was wonderful to see the detail and the creative ways in which these various young people approached these details ... the pillars and windows.

But what they had a lot of fun with, in the case of the courthouse, was recreating the interior. Now most of them [have] never been inside the courthouse, but many of them had, you know, a twelve person jury. They had a judge on the bench.

We also saw a number of landmark local churches including the top prizes in both of the categories. Saint James United Church built in 1862 and, the other, Saint Paul's Anglican Church built in 1898 both in Antigonish Town with beautiful spires, beautiful details.

How much do you think folks connected with these buildings?

We wanted all the participants of every age to spend some time and, maybe unconsciously, reflect a little bit on the significance of these buildings. The fact that they are landmarks and that they are part of our cultural heritage.

It was our way of giving young people in particular, but people of all ages, an excuse to engage with this, but in a fun way.

In most cases these were folks for whom Lego is, in many ways, an artistic medium.

So it was meeting them halfway and inviting them to engage in something that they probably wouldn't have otherwise normally done, but seem to have got a lot of satisfaction out of.

What are the plans for next year?

We already commissioned a small trophy for each category built entirely of Lego.

It has a base on it that's going to fit a number of  prize-winning names. So we're already looking toward the future.

Our winners are keen. In the 13 and over category, the winners for the top prize were two brothers and the second prize was their mother. So I think we've created a healthy bit of competition going forward in that household.

We really hope that people will continue to be this enthusiastic.

We had over 600 people cast ballots for the people's choice award and over 200 people through the museum in two hours yesterday. For a small community museum in March, it was a huge amount of participation both online and in person. So we're definitely going to make this part of our programming going forward and so delighted that the community put their support behind us in a whole variety of different ways.

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