Eliot Arts teacher Maria Evardone has greatly expanded the scope and scale of her Medieval Faire project for the 2025-2026 school year. With the success of last year’s faire, Evardone’s goal for this year’s was to add a deeper lesson of “connectivity between cultures” to the curriculum. As a teacher, she has noticed that when medieval times are discussed the history that comes to mind is often very Eurocentric in perspective. During this time period however, there were many exciting events and cultures happening outside of Europe, interacting with each other through things like trade, technology, and art. Evardone wanted to bring this expanded way of viewing medieval history to this year’s faire to encourage students to think outside of the box when learning world history. Medieval World Faire: The Silk Road and Historical Museum was the title for this year to reflect the growth of the faire’s scope beyond Europe and how non-Eurocentric cultural exchanges shaped our world today.
Creating the Faire
Many of the students weren’t as familiar with the medieval cultures of areas such as Asia, Africa, or the Middle East, leading to the expanded scope of the faire introducing students to many new historical points of view. Students were excited to research cultures beyond Europe and dove into the kingdoms and empires along the Silk Road. Similar to last year, students worked in groups that each represented a different society. Each group designed sets, their own boothing areas, created artifacts, and put together period appropriate costumes. This year’s group of students representing the European royal court even practiced period accurate dances after school. and the class produced a film of their Medieval Shadow Puppet Show projects.
What happened at the Faire
The 7th graders hosted the event themselves, guiding guests of the faire “along the Silk Road” as they moved from the European booths towards the booths representing Asia as simulation of the route medieval travelers would have taken at the time. Students flexed their public speaking and presentation skills as they explained how cultures flowed along the Silk Road and the many unique facets of each medieval civilization along the way.
What’s next
Evardone plans to keep the Faire growing and hopes to bring even more classrooms and students into the project next year. PEF looks forward to seeing where the Silk Road takes Eliot’s students next.
If you are interested in supporting the Eliot Arts Medieval Fair or other projects like it, consider donating here.
