Kamloops Museum looking for your submissions for mountain biking exhibit

The Kamloops Museum is going to have an exhibit on something the city is renowned for – mountain biking.

The exhibit titled Mountain Bike Mecca will launch on April 24 and run into the fall. The exhibit will be made up almost entirely from submissions of photos, videos and stories from those in the local mountain biking community.

Curator Matt Macintosh has worked at the museum for five years, and says this is the first time there has been a show with this focus.

“The ridership in Kamloops is high and the talent pool is extremely deep. There’s a disproportionately large number of elite riders who have emerged from Kamloops, and Kamloops as a location is formative to the global culture of mountain biking,” Macintosh says. “As the hub or mirror to Kamloops that the museum is, it’s important for us to reflect this really important culture back.”

The exhibit needs submissions to run, as Macintosh says the museum’s collection doesn’t contain anything directly related to the sport. Submissions such as stories, photos and videos are all welcomed. He says the videos will be compiled into a reel, showing the wide scope of people who take part in the sport.

“We’re looking for Go Pro footage, iPhone footage, something that’s done with more forethought, something done right in the moment… when combined, it does present a fairly democratic capture of what the culture looks like.”

In addition to the action shots, Macintosh hopes to hear from the community about what mountain biking means to them on a personal level.

“We also want to look at some of the underlying values that are part of the activity,” Macintosh says. “Maybe some of the things that bring people into the sport… Self-reliance tends to be one of the things that is a part of the culture of mountain biking and we want to unpack why that is, and what are the interesting issues that surround the fairly robust use of space and land in this area?”

This isn’t the first time the museum has done a sports-centred display, and likely not the last.

“This is the third show we’ve done that is around a sports lifestyle,” Macintosh says. “In 2016 we did a show on skateboarding culture in Kamloops and in 2018 we did a show on Kamloops ski culture. From my perspective, having moved here from out of province, these three cultures, at least, are really uniquely well done in Kamloops and I’d say this is certainly not the end of a flight path of us presenting non-traditional museum exhibits on the things Kamloops tends to do very well.”

If you have anything to submit for the Mountain Bike Mecca exhibit, send an email to mmacintosh@kamloops.ca.

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