Tucked in the back corner of the Agribition site, as far down Cooperator’s Arena as you can walk, the Family Ag Pavilion attracts groups of children all week. While other areas of the event have livestock and other animals, games and educational activities draw children to this space.
Any day of the week before 3 pm, there’s a lineup in the Family Ag Pavilion to the Saskatchewan Cattlemen’s Association (SCA) Cow Dome. Glenn LaPointe, the communications and marketing lead for SCA, funnels kids in and out of the dome.
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“The teachers are ecstatic,” LaPointe says of the Cow Dome.
Previously, SCA had bought virtual reality goggles to use at events such as Agribition to help teach kids about the cattle industry.
However, the goggles and the videos were from the same company. When that company went out of business, SCA lost access to both the tech and the videos.
So, SCA switched to the Cow Dome, a large inflatable projection dome that looks a little like an igloo. People sit inside the dome, and watch the videos, which are projected onto the walls.
The projection dome is owned by SCA. Unlike the virtual reality goggles, the videos are owned by SCA as well. SCA decided which families would be featured and hired people to shoot and edit the videos, with LaPointe providing input. The videos feature producers from across Saskatchewan, showcasing ranch events as well as children learning about agriculture by working on their family farms.
“So we do touch on carbon sequestration in all three films,” LaPointe says. “In one we show them branding, and we show them vaccinating, show them administering a painkiller. And then we actually explain that through the video as well.”
LaPointe says they try to keep the videos around seven to 10 minutes in length because anything longer would lose the attention of the children. Children aged five and younger may still find that length of video challenging. LaPointe says their next step will be to create a cartoon that will engage younger kids. They also plan on creating more videos centring on different farms across the province. LaPointe, who has a background in videography, would be more involved in creating those videos, as well.
“Over time, I want to go and actually develop more film,” he says. “So I have like seven more farms to film at…I want to go to their farms and film and then have a big film library that we could build any kind of movie out of it, and always keep the inventory fresh.”
LaPointe is also on the board for Agriculture in the Classroom, so there’s also potential for the video dome to reach a wider audience of children through Ag in the Classroom.
