Wow, what an experience. To be honest, my first PLP exhibition was a lot more work than I expected it to be. But the result was a fun, engaging project, that left my group and me feeling proud of what we had produced.
Our task, in groups, was to create an interactive experience that taught our “audience” (parents, relatives, and friends) about a topic that we had been assigned. All of the topics were centred around the years leading up to, during, and after World War One. These topics also all had something about them that related to the growing sense of Canadian identity at the time. Our audience would make their way into the gym and through five interactive experiences, in chronological order.
My group was given the topic of the conscription crisis of 1917. This would prove to be a challenge as this topic was not especially exciting. My group consisted of myself, Chris, Zak, Anatolia, and Matthew. Our first course of action was to research or topics. And research we did. By the end of the week we were experts on our topic and felt that we could illustrate it well to our audience. Next, we wrote a script for our project and decided on what the experience would look like. We began rehearsing and making sure that our experience was exactly 3 minutes long (the amount of time that we had to present). Our project was almost ready.
On the day of the exhibition we frantically tried to set up our experience. We didn’t have much time and we finished just a mere 15 minutes before the exhibition began. Then, the parents began to come through our experiences and I became québécois for the next 3 hours.
When the audience entered our part of the gym, they were met by Zakaria and me, two québécois people. We introduced ourselves and made it clear that the audience was québécois now too. First, we led them to Matthew, a British general. He made an inspirational speech promoting the war effort but Zak and I quickly argued with him, explaining that it was not our war to fight in since we were not French or English. We engaged the audience and encouraged them to argue along with us.
Next, we made our way to Chris, who was playing the prime minister, Robert Borden. Chris was giving a speech about the war effort. We sat down and listened for a bit, with Zak and me scoffing at many of Chris’s remarks. Eventually Chris stated that Canada would attempt to pass mandatory enlistment. This outraged Zak and me. We began yelling and quickly started handing out signs to the parents. We led them in a protest, chanting: “Conscription is not fair! Conscription is not fair!” We then led the parents towards Anatolia, who was voting. We realized that she was voting in favour of conscription and stormed away outraged. Finally, we led the parents to Matthew again. This time, Matthew told the parents that conscription had passed and that they all had to fight in the war. Zak and I quickly began protesting this and then informed the parents that there was something they could do to get around having to fight. We told the parents that if they said they were farmers, religious, or very sick, then they would not have to fight. After that we sent them away to the next experience and ran beck to greet the next group of parents. By the end of the exhibition I was exhausted. My voice was gone and my throat was killing me. I realized that I had probably yelled “Conscription is not fair!” a couple hundred too many times.
I learned so much from the exhibition. Not only did I become an expert on the conscription crisis, I also learned how to work together to create an amazing exhibition. I found this type of project quite fun and learned 10 times as I would have from just studying for a test.
If I had to do this project again there is something I would do differently. I would have put more work into backdrops and props for our group since we did not have very many. But this was not a major problem and did not distract the audience from the great project that our group had produced.
There were many things that made our project successful. Having Zak and me guide the parents through our experience was a great idea since we could really push them to engage in our project. It also helped that I speak French, which enabled me to get really into character. Another thing that made our project successful was the people that were in my group. Everyone really embraced their characters wholeheartedly and did a great job as actors. I think that this really helped enhance the accuracy of our experience.
To conclude, I think that the exhibition was a great experience and I will remember it for a long time.
Here are some pictures from the exhibition:
