Sarnia high school students contribute designs for museum exhibit

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The Oil Museum of Canada tapped into some young ingenuity to help it tell an old story in a new way.

The 61-year-old Lambton County museum in Oil Springs is in the midst of an $881,000 upgrading project that will include renewing exhibits used to tell the story of how oil was discovered there in the 1800s.

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Sarnia high school students contribute designs for museum exhibit Back to video

As part of the project, the museum asked Grade 12 design and technology students at Sarnia’s Northern Collegiate to come up with designs for an interactive display about simple machines. They also built scale models.

Christina Sydorko, educational program co-ordinator at the museum, was a teacher for 15 years and knew about the expertise available in local schools when the oil museum went looking for some “hands-on interactive exhibits.”

That led to a simple machines project a group of six students at the high school completed over three weeks, developing designs and scale models that will be used by the county to create a permanent mobile display at the museum.

The results exceeded expectations, Sydorko said.

“These students really rose to the challenge and have created professional-grade and quality models,” she said. “The proposed displays are very tactile and interactive, which is exactly what we were hoping for.”

Sydorko said the students involved are planning to pursue further education in design and engineering, and the project was handled the same way it would have been if the county hired a professional company to do the work.

“We handed them a design brief with very tight parameters,” she said.

The exhibit to be built using the students’ designs and models must be on wheels, narrow enough to fit through a museum door, be used safely with both adults and children, and only use three colours – black, white and gold – to fit the museum’s post-modern design.

Using 3D printers and other technology, the students came back with three different designs and models for the museum.

“This is a great learning experience and we are happy to help design an interactive display that can be used to teach about the history of oil,” student Brett Howard said.

Renovations at the museum began in February and are expected to be completed by the end of June, said Andrew Meyer, the county’s general manager of cultural services.

“We are hoping, depending on the public-health restrictions that might be in place, to reopen in mid-July,” he said.

The renovations follow an assessment the county carried out in 2017 on the museum building that opened in 1960 that identified needed improvements, including upgrading of heating and cooling, replacing original windows and repairing a minor leak in the basement, Meyer said.

Using reserves and grants, the renovations are taking care of that list of improvements along with renewing the exhibits in the museum’s main gallery.

“That 1960s main exhibition building is getting a complete renovation,” Meyer said. “It will look very different.”

pmorden@postmedia.com