Intro
On Thursday June 13th, 2024, I completed my very first spring exhibition. I worked in a group with Julia, Madeline, Ella, Griffin, and Marcus, and our focus was “Discovery and Learning”. We worked together to create an immersive experience, meant to take you through some our favourite stops of our Oregon field study. We separated into three groups within our group, each focusing on a different location. We chose to talk about Fort Stevens, the Yaquina Head Tidepools, and the Tillamook Creamery.
Oregon
Our driving question for the PLP 8 segment of the exhibition was “how does language fuel adventure?” and we modelled our work around advertisements for Oregon. We adventured all over the Oregon Coast for our May field study and we kept track of our travels and experiences within the book below. Feel free to explore my Oregon journey by reading through my field study book!
Tilamook Creamery
Ella and I worked together to create a presentation about the Tillamook Creamery and how the cheese is made. Near the end of our Oregon trip, we visited the Tilamook Cheese Factory and Creamery and it was a highlight for me. To share what we learned, Ella and I made three dimensional models out of clay describing the process of making cheese. We showed all the stages which are: milk, curds, salting, forming, packaging and then shipping. My favourite piece that we made was a miniature package of Tillamook cheese made with plastic wrap and a tiny Tillamook cheese label. We also wanted give people the experience of what it would be like to milk a cow. We made a fake cow udder using a black rubber glove with multiple small holes poked in all the fingers and it hung from a wooden stand. This activity attracted people to our table because it was fun. We took people through our station, first showing them our cheese diagram, and then our udder. We would offer them a cupcake or a piece of cheese on their way out. Ella and I dressed up in hairnets, and aprons, similar to the clothes we saw the workers wear at the cheese factory. We also dressed up a wooden model in a similar outfit and sat her on top of our makeshift cow. I believe this project was a success, and I was so happy with the way our hard work turned out. The PLP teachers also called us out during cleanup, saying that our Tillamook Cheese project was one of the exhibition projects to see!
Tide Pools
Madeline and Julia worked together to create the second part of our project. They created an interactive tide pool, similar to the ones we saw when we went to Yaquina Bay. Madeline and Julia crafted a presentation around the animals inside of the tide pool, and told people about what it was like to go to the Bay, and what they learned. They made starfish and sea anenomies and painted them to look very realistic. They dressed up in waders and sunglasses, acting as the tourists and tour guides we met when we went to Yaquina Bay. They dressed their little wooden model the same way, and positioned him holding a little tiny starfish. This was such a fun activity, both in the real Yaquina Bay, but also the makeshift version of it that we made for this exhibition.
Fort Stevens
Griffin and Marcus worked together to create a model of one of the rifles we learned about when we visited Fort Stevens. They recreated a 200 pound parrot rifle, which looks like a cannon, but is labeled as a rifle because of the notches inside of the barrel. Fort Stevens had 8 of these rifles which they placed strategically, so that it could aim 180 degrees. They made a small version of the rifle that could also spin around 180 degrees, and also dressed a model of a person that they named Vincent. Poor Vincent lost a few limbs over the course of the project, but was still going strong by the end.
Ads
We also created ads that are meant to promote different locations Oregon. We made them using the programs Canva and Sketches Pro, and chose the font BLOC from Canva. We used natural green colours, and did our best to make them all feel cohesive and aesthetic. We chose those colours because we wanted to create a feeling of tranquility and nature to those observing our ads and presentation. We worked on them when we got back from the field study, and we showed the ads to people after they learned about cheese making. We used the same font and colour scheme in our presentations and outfits to connect all of our work.
Teamwork/Interactive
If I had to choose the most important elements in our exhibition project, both teamwork and interaction with our audience helped our success. During this exhibition, I learned about how the more interactive and interesting your project is, the more people will enjoy coming to see it. Believe it or not, adding the cow udder was a pretty last minute decision. This added element took our exhibit from good to great, and it made me so much happier and confident with the end result. Because it was silly and fun, it broke the ice with the audience and made our exhibition more successful because the audience could participate in our project. Teamwork was obviously a huge part of this project, but I also can recognize that having teamwork skills is not just being able to work with people, but being able to recognize how to help people work better with you. In my group, there were self-starters who would try their hardest no matter what, but also people who would only apply themselves if they were interested in the topic. I pitched the idea to add a topic that I knew they would enjoy, so they would become more engaged in the work. I really believe that this was a big reason that we were able to all work so well together and create a great end result.
Outro
I learned a lot in this exhibition, but my favourite learning piece was how much interacting with our exhibit changes a project for those looking at it. Interaction can take a boring lecture and turn it into something engaging and exciting. Involving the audience always makes things more interesting, but it also transports them into a different mindset and helps them learn and connect better with the project. Asking people to milk a fake cow udder is awkward, and funny and strange. Things like this push people out of their comfort zone and start conversations. These small interactions and details open people up to learning, and forces them to pay more attention to what we are talking about. It helps them actually want to understand. This was the trick we used to attract more people to our exhibition, and what I will continue to use ideas like this throughout my school journey.
