Submitted by Kim Bollard
The Museum of Early Trades & Crafts (METC) has launched an interactive summer program for kids and adults. The Summer Travel Passport program invites everyone traveling across the globe or down the street to share their summer stories and help us explore how we travel in the 21st century as compared to that of 19th century New Jerseyans.
Our young visitors are invited to pick up a Travel Passport at the museum and then log their travel entries throughout the summer. Whether your trip is to the Jersey shore or the Great Wall of China, we would love to see where you travel and how you got there. After each trip, stop back into METC to collect your passport stamps for each of the places you go.
And for those connected to the digital world, you can link your travel stories and photos on social media with #metctravelstories featuring METC’s garden griffin. Pick up a cutout of our griffin at METC and take him along on your travels. Feature him in your photos of your favorite vacation spots and send it to us!
Our Summer Travel Passport Program will culminate with a Welcome Home Party on August 30, 2018 at 4 p.m. at the museum, and all participants are invited. More details about METC’s summer adventures and Travel Passport program can be found on our website.
The METC Summer Travel Passport program was created in connection with the museum’s current exhibit, “Are We There Yet? Stories of Travel” by Stagecoach and Steam. This exhibition explores 18th and 19th century travel just prior to the era of the automobile. Travel has always connected people to each other. Today we take for granted the cars, trains, buses, and planes we use to commute to work, visit family and journey to exotic places; but early travel was much more complicated. The 19th century saw explosive growth in transportation networks, from stagecoach routes to railroads, that made connection to others easier than ever before. Indeed, traveling by stagecoach or train 150 years ago was a very different experience; dirty, dusty, and wearisome. We hope you will join us on this special summer journey and help us explore the many places travels can take us!
If you’re still closer to home this month check out the first of Madison’s Downtown Concerts this summer on Friday, June 22, at 6 p.m. The Museum of Early Trades & Crafts in partnership with the Downtown Development Commission hosts a series of six free concerts throughout the summer. The concerts are on the front lawn of the Museum. We invite you to bring your friends and family, picnic dinner and blanket and have a listen to What’s What, a Madison-based rock and roll band!
METC is located at 9 Main Street in the heart of downtown Madison, just two blocks from the Madison train station. For more information visit: metc.org.
(above) Museum Educator, Hilary May with a few of METC’s young visitors learning about how different their daily travels are compared a coach ride on a 19th century carriage.
