Young inquiring minds will soon have an opportunity to become history detectives thanks to the launch of the Junior Archivist Club by the Plant City Photo Archives.
The program will be open for all children age 9 to 14 and utilize a four-volume series called “Be A History Detective.” Participants will dive into the history of Plant City and surrounding neighborhoods and learn the importance of not only analyzing history, but also preserving our modern community for future analysis.
“If you know what happened in the past, you know to save stuff in the present so you can continue to preserve history,” Gil Gott, executive director for the Plant City Photo Archives and History Center, said. “Kids don’t know past their own small history. They think everything is new and that they’re inventing everything. Hopefully, this program will get them hooked on history.”
The free program will begin with a course on being a “photograph detective.” The registered students will receive a tote bag, magnifying glass, lanyard, ID badge and a notebook. The course will be one hour per week and last for six weeks. The goal will be to offer a fun, mystery-filled experience to bring out the inner detectives in all the attendees.
“To my knowledge, this is the first Junior Archivist Club in the country,” Gott said. “I belong to many archivist societies and I’ve gone to them all asking if they have or know of an example of a Junior Archivists Club and none of them do, though they all say it’s a great idea. There are Junior Historian clubs all over but no archivist ones.”
The students will learn about the importance of archivists, how to analyze a photograph for
clues and context, how to compare photos to modern settings, how to make a timeline and connect dots to piece together the meaning of a photo and how to correctly collect and organize data.
“We’re just trying to teach people to save their stuff,” Gott said. “That starts with the kids. If we can teach them the importance of history we can teach them to want to document the world they live in.”
He plans to have many hands-on lessons with his pupils, teaching them firsthand how to preserve photos and find out what’s going on based off of one single image.
Because of Plant City’s deep, well-documented history with the Strawberry Festival, he plans on structuring much of this first program around the annual event. He said the students can analyze old photos and then attend the event themselves to see in person what has changed and what’s stayed the same.
The Archives received a grant from Unity in the Community to jumpstart the club and has plans to expand to a speech, artifact and diary detective program. The club will officially start from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Feb. 26. Students need to be signed up by their parent or guardian at the Archives, located at 106 S. Evers St. Gott said he hopes he will have a group of six solid students.
“If we can save one photo from the dust heap of history,” Gott said, “then that’s one more we don’t have to worry about.”