Portage la Prairie's Fort la Reine Museum is offering digital programming in an effort to keep people engaged throughout the COVID-19 isolation restrictions.

The Museum's executive director, Madison Connolly, is dabbling in video production to create a series of instructional tutorials that feature some of the activities that have helped popularize the facility's Prairie Sunday program.

"We're trying to find new methods to reach our audiences and right now digital education and entertainment is really big," she says. "We don't want the current situation to discourage people from learning about history and engaging with the Museum, so this is a great way to reach out to Portagers."

Connolly began the endeavour two weeks ago and has uploaded how-to videos for ice cream and salt water taffy, along with a segment about creating and using natural dyes.

"It's not as high quality as I would love it to be, I've just been using my iPhone and doing the research," says Connolly. "I do some prep work for myself here at the Museum... and then just learned how to edit videos and dub it with audio and upload it as soon as I can. It's a long process but it's so much fun."

The Museum was slated to open for the season May 10 - but safeguards surrounding COVID-19 has prevented that from happening. Connolly says she is still optimistic that some sort of shortened season will occur, but the facility's doors will not open to the public until it is safe to do so.

"I am still optimistic that we can open, even if it is restricted, if not then yes things will be digitally done," she notes.

The Museum's popular escape room event for this spring has been postponed, but Connolly says they are hoping to bring it back for August.

To experience Fort la Reine Museum digitally, visit its YouTube page here.