CMHR building national and global reputation: Annual Public Meeting

Press Releae

Winnipeg – February 19, 2019 – Four years after opening its doors, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) is already becoming an iconic global landmark and destination, participants at its Annual Public Meeting heard today.

“Just as Winnipeg’s skyline changed with the arrival of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, so too did Manitoba’s tourism landscape,” Colin Ferguson, president and CEO of Travel Manitoba, said at the meeting. A goal has been set to increase annual tourism expenditures in Manitoba over the next three years by $600 million to $2.2 billion, he added.

“We now classify the CMHR as one of our ‘boulders’ – an anchor tourism product that attracts visitors from long-haul markets. It’s one reason Manitoba was listed by Lonely Planet travel guide among the top 10 regions in the world to visit this year.”

CMHR President and CEO John Young said 70 per cent of visitors who bought tickets for the Museum in the past two years have come from outside Winnipeg. “We’ve seen tourists to Churchill who never used to leave the Winnipeg airport spend an extra night because they want to see this museum,” he said. “Many visitors driving across Canada have also told us they decided to stop in Winnipeg specifically because of the Museum.”

Young said the Museum’s profile will be raised even more by its depiction on Canada’s new vertical $10 banknote as a symbol of Canada’s ongoing pursuit of rights and freedoms.

Attention from national and international travel writers and media has also been valuable. In the past two years alone, over 160 journalists from outside Winnipeg have visited the Museum, coming from all across Canada and the United States, Germany, Japan, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, France, India and Mexico. Last summer, the Museum was profiled on CTV’s popular program, “The Amazing Race Canada” for the second time. In December, Airbnb named Winnipeg among the top 19 destinations in the world for 2019, with prominent mention of the CMHR — the same choice made by National Geographic Traveler for 2016.

“This kind of global travel media attention has never happened before,” Ferguson said. “Our province is currently one of the hottest spots in the travel media world, where unique and off-the-beaten path destinations are highly valued.”

Travel Manitoba has become a new sponsor of the Museum’s blockbuster exhibition, Mandela: Struggle for Freedom, which was extended to this fall due to popular demand.

The Museum’s global reputation is also growing in the fields of museology, technology and human rights, Young said. Last September, the CMHR hosted the annual conference of the Federation of International Human Rights Museums, attracting participants from 22 countries. Collaborations have been forged with museums and human rights groups in Ukraine, Armenia Brazil, France, South Africa and other countries.

The Museum has also welcomed technical delegations and planners from institutions like the Smithsonian and the future Barack Obama Presidential Center, while creators of a new museum in Leipzig, Germany say their institution was inspired by the CMHR.

The CMHR’s leaders, experts and curators are also being asked to share their knowledge and experience at dozens of conferences, forums and seminars around the world from Korea to Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Croatia, the United Kingdom and the USA.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is the first museum in the world solely dedicated to the evolution, celebration and future of human rights. It is the first national museum in Canada to be established outside the National Capital Region. Using multimedia technology and other innovative approaches, the Museum creates inspiring encounters with human rights appropriate for all ages, in a visitor experience unlike any other.

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For more information, please contact:
Maureen Fitzhenry
CMHR media relations manager
204-289-2112
Cell: 204-782-8442
maureen.fitzhenry@humanrights.ca

CMHR building national and global reputation: Annual Public Meeting

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