Hello! We’re the “Impact” team from the Public History M.A., at Western. Coming into this project, we didn’t have a lot of experience working with professional social media pages, although we’ve had plenty of experience in our personal lives watching them. Early in our project, we recognised that Banting’s story had changed the world, and we wanted to share this by engaging with the existing Banting House National Historic Site online community and also reaching new viewers.
Our brainstorming process began with a tour of Banting House and reading through hundreds of Dr Dear Banting letters that were written from 2005 to the present. We found these letters to be extremely moving and powerful – no matter what angle we tried, we always returned to the letters and let them inform our process. One of our challenges was to balance the communication goals of Banting House with the meaning of the letters, while still being as creative as possible. We came up with dozens of ideas, but not every idea met these criteria – not every idea was a winner. See image 1 for our planning session.
Image 1: Our planning session at Banting House on October 4, 2025. Taken by the authors.
Returning to the museum bright and early on a Thursday morning, armed with our storyboards, we began to film. It made sense to us to record material about the impact of his discovery at Banting House. We spread out into different corners of the museum to make our visions a reality. Filming included setting up shots, going up and down flights of stairs, and laying out and returning the Dear Dr Banting letters to their drawers.
We did as much work as we could onsite to gain inspiration during our brainstorming and filming. All our ideas came from these letters, but one of our concepts came from realising how many Dear Dr Banting letters there were. An estimated 3000 letters over 20 years have been written to Dr Banting, showcasing the impact the museum has on visitors. With permission from the curator, Grant Maltman, we carefully laid a sample of the letters throughout the second floor. We became intimately aware of how many letters there are since once we were done filming, we had to return them to their homes (see images 2 and 3).
Image 2: Kim laying out cards at Banting House on October 16, 2025. Taken by the authors
Image 3: Claire laying out cards at Banting House on October 16, 2025. Taken by the authors.
After we finished filming, it was time for the post-production editing. None of us have had the opportunity to try our hands at editing, but that was about to change! The tediousness of it became immediately apparent – becoming familiar with CapCut, spending hours tweaking clips to match the audio, and so much more. As a group, we have a newfound appreciation for the video editors and social media managers doing this work and making it look so easy.
During the whole process, we were learning every step of the way. From researching unfamiliar topics, such as how animals can get diabetes, to translating various languages, and learning editing software, we all had steep learning curves. We also learned how hard it was to juggle all these requirements. But we relied on our teamwork the entire way through to springboard ideas, solve problems, and give advice. At the end of this process, we can say we are proud of the work we have done, the products we have created, and we hope you enjoy!
Sincerely,
Claire, Kim, Erin