GROWING SEED SAVERS IN MUSEUM
Educational programs
The Growing Seed Savers in Museums (2021-2022) worked out several educational programs on agrobiodiversity and heritage plants for museums. The programs are open to be used by any museum, educational institution or non-governmental organization that wants to promote biodiversity and the use of heritage plants. There are also several learning materials available on this homepage such as case studies, videos and a guide on seed saving that can be used during the educational programs.
MORE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
The Baltic-Danish Seed Savers partnership has developed more resources for adult education with help from NORDPLUS
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A guide to lecturers and a lesson-plan in English.
This has been transferred and used by the NGOs for courses in seed saving. All adapted it to their national needs. Read the Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Danish versions. -
An English guide to seed saving building on a book written by the Danish Seed Savers. This was translated into Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian.
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Two slide shows were made to support the teaching, one about the basics of seed saving, and one about garden history.
The stories from courses
By Vivi Logan, member of the Danish Seed Savers
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Date: 5.3. 2022
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Place: Kringsminde Museum, Kringsmindevej 9, 7000 Fredericia
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Time: 10.00 am – 14.00 pm
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Course teacher: Seed Saver Vivi Logan
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Course assistant: Project manager Charlotte Snebæk Poulsen
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Participants: 24 persons participated in the course (11 Co-workers and volunteers from the museum, 13 Members of the Danish Seed Savers)
After all the Corona lockdown it was a delight to have a room full of people interested in old varieties of seeds, plants and interested in helping to learn about seed saving to keep the old varieties alive. There was also great interest in the ways the museum showcase life, tools etc. from long ago. The participants had a possibility to have a look inside in the old-fashioned kitchen with a wood burning stove, that makes it possible to recreate the taste of food from when some of the seed varieties were originally created.
The group consisted of both people with good knowledge of seed-saving, little knowledge, and beginners. We were lucky that one of the participants is a professional seed-breeder, so he helped with his knowledge in breeding large portions, threshing and keeping seeds pure on a field-scale.
The participants were very interested in the subject and asked a lot of questions and even seed savers with a good deal of experience learned something new i.e. “I never thought I that the varieties my neighbors grow in their gardens, can influence the seed saving in my garden.
Both at the lunch break and for an hour after the course had ended, we had the possibility of swapping seeds, stories, knowledge, and general chatting about plants, seeds, and museums. Charlotte had brought the Seed Savers Market seed-box, giving people the possibility to buy some of the old varieties, which was very popular.
The museum cooked lunch for us using old recipes, but due to the time of the year mainly with store-bought ingredients.
An added benefit by including non-museum people was that more were interested in becoming volunteers in the museum and to help running “Margrethes Køkkenhave” this year.