Pärnu Museum marks student work camp’s 60th anniversary

Pärnu Museum has opened an exhibition marking 60 years of the Estonian Student Work Camp, tracing its development and the experiences of participants in Pärnu County. ERR reported that the display spans work, camp life, songs, reunions and friendships that have lasted over the decades.

Photographs, stories and songs recall the student work camps of the Soviet era. For many young people, the camps offered their first chance to earn money, live independently and learn to take responsibility alongside others.

Valter Parve, a former camp group leader and one of the exhibition’s curators, said the camps give young people the chance to work and become more independent, while learning how to respond in a crisis through life in a group.

The exhibition brings together the wider history of the Estonian Student Work Camp with accounts from participants and group leaders in Pärnu County. Photographs, group clothing, uniforms, diaries and songbooks show both the work routine and how young people spent their free time.

Visitors can listen to and sing camp songs, browse old diaries and songbooks, and take photographs beside a reunion tent dating from 1974. The tent was brought to Pärnu from Saaremaa. The displays also tell how former participants went on to become group leaders.

The exhibition is open until January 31, 2027. Evenings devoted to camp songs will be held in the exhibition hall each month.