Happy new year! 2016 was an interesting year, so of course the last project of the year had to be just as interesting! The project was filled with learning (of course), stress (as always) and a lot of last minute planning (well duh…) but the final product was worth all of the hard work we put in to it.

This year for the exhibition my class was tasked with the challenge of creating an immersive experience of Canada’s emerging identity from pre WWI to the depression. My group got assigned post war, 1920s. It was a time of excitement, women finally got the chance to vote, there were new innovations, lots of partying and in general people wanted to enjoy life after the rough times of war. My group was made up of me and four of my classmates: Luciano Boniface, Maria Melhado, Michael Sutherland and Kirby Harris. This was a pretty strong group, as we’re all hard workers, but there was only one non newbie in the group, so most of us were quite inexperienced with exhibitions. We didn’t let that get in our way though, we were all up for the challenge!

Our project began with doing a lot of research. We learned about the time period, the key players and a general timeline of important events. We found out what the 20s were famous for and what people in general don’t know about the time. Then we had to come up with our setting. We first thought of 3 potential settings and then came up with a list of pros and cons for each and developed our ideas from there.

After quite a bit of planning and brainstorming we decided we’d do a voting booth, where people could learn a bit about women’s new rights, and a strike. Then it was time to figure out our characters. We decided that I should be a rich woman who was voting, Maria should be a First Nations soldier, Kirby lead a strike, Michael was a strike breaker and Luciano was a homeless beggar. From there we developed our scripts, here’s a part of the script:

Then it was time to make our props. Here’s a list of what we needed for our setting:
Protest signs
Tables for the polling station
A ballot box
Polling booths
Backgrounds
Display boards and clothing racks (for walls)

On the day of the exhibition right at three we started setting up. Once we set up our group felt awkward because we had so much empty space. So 10 minutes to go we took the art display boards from the hall way and the clothing racks from the lost and found (which we covered with paper) to create walls and make it look like we had less empty space.

When we began to present it took a couple tries to get into it, but once we got started it went fairly smoothly. All in all, I’m very proud of what my group managed to accomplish. If I were to do this again I would definitely do a few things differently. I would figure out how to use the space better because ours looked kind of empty. Along with that, I’d try to get a more interesting character because my part in the exhibition felt really dull compared to my groups’ characters.

In general though, I think we did a great job, especially considering our limited time, he fact that we weren’t able to set it up until 2 hours before hand, and not getting to rehearse with actual people going through.

This project taught me both a lot about the 1920s and how to create an immersive experience. We had to make a performance and a set that people could walk through and experience. This project added a new technique to my long list of interesting ways to present information!’