It’s now 2019 and I am relived! Me and my class have just finished our PLP winter exhibition so some of the pressure is off, for now. For those of you who may not know what, exactly, a “PLP Exhibition” is, you can educate yourself with this link.
Over the years, my class has done a few different kinds of exhibition displays. The majority of them have been focused on a good or service we created to solve a problem or answer a question. Some of them have had a different focus and style, for example, the time we created podcasts. These podcasts did not involve presenting a good or service, in fact, the exhibition itself was a podcast.
However, this winter’s exhibition was very different from any we had done in the past. The goal of this year’s exhibition was to create a 6-stage, interactive experience about the 1950s and how the themes and ideas of this time period relate to 2018-19.
Leading up to this exhibition, we needed to do a lot of research on the 1950’s. We focused on many of the main ideas or themes of the 1950’s like conformity, heavy consumerism, the “atomic family” (one dad, one mom, two children), as well as McCarthyism and the battle against communism. We made sure to take note of these so we could incorporate them into each scene.
We wrote a script for the exhibition during the week our teachers were away on a field school. To help counteract the loss of authority figures in the class, we decided to elect some DRI’s (Designated Responsible Individuals) to help lead the project. We had never really done anything like this, on this scale, before this year. We elected two co-project DRI’s to be responsible for the overall project. We also elected one Set Design DRI, one Script DRI, and one Costume DRI. Once the DRIs where elected, we divided into 6 groups, each one responsible for creating the script for each of the six scenes.
Each script required props and acting parts. One of the most difficult props to use was the scream box, you may remember it from a past exhibition. It was difficult to use because it required a lot of work to transport it. Additionally, on the day of the performance, the dividing wall that was to be in the gym, was broken. We found this out the day of the exhibition. A small group of us got together to brainstorm how to address this and we came up with a good idea. We used some curtains, that were to be used in one of the scenes, and we created a hanging wall. It was really good problem solving, very quickly, for a significant problem we encountered.
One of the best things about doing the exhibition was that we all worked really well together. We really listened to each others ideas and acted on them.
Even with some challenges, I think that the exhibition went well. We had a large amount of people walk through the exhibit, which I have to say tired me out quite a bit because my role required high energy and a lot of yelling.
Before starting this post, I was talking to my mom about the exhibition, to help brainstorm ideas to write about. What I came up with was quite interesting. I realized that I tend to enjoy presentation style projects, like this one, over production type projects, like my Metaphor Machine. I find that projects like this one allow me to really access the depths of my creativity by enabling me to really learn my character.
Another thing that the discussion helped me to realize is that I love exhibitions. In addition to working on very cool projects, I really like creating and preparing the room that holds our projects. I love creating imagery for our rooms and I always try to really immerse visitors into the world we create.
Unfortunately, I’ve found this kind of hard in the last year or so of exhibitions. In the past, the themes we were given were more or less “pop-culture” related, like Harry Potter or Star Wars. However, the more recent themes have been local/global problem solving. I find the problem solving “themes” tend to make the rooms seem less exciting and a bit more vague. I noticed that the student presenters are also a little less excited. For example, my grade 9 room theme was a Hogwarts dorm room from Harry Potter. I loved creating this room and was really excited for parents to come and see it. However, in grade 10, the theme was Hawaii. While we worked hard to find Hawaiian outfits and created a good punch, it was just not as exciting. Harry Potter, it seemed to me, was a bit more of an immersive theme. Hawaii was not as immersive.That’s not to say I don’t have fun with themes like Hawaii, its just that I feel like the pop-culture themes are a little more exciting.
That said, I enjoyed our December exhibition, I liked immersing myself in the theme, in my character and in the glimpse into the 1950’s that we created.
I think that this exhibition went very well and I’m exited to do my next one.