The Anchor of our Nation

Welcome readers to my final blog post of the calendar year and we are ending it off with a bang. The entire project is called Ology of Apology where we explored 3 events that occurred in British Columbia’s history. We also got to go on a whopping 6 field studies where we gained knowledge and experiences that happened in the past.

We started by looking at the Komagata Maru but since there is another blog post on it, you can go check that one out if you are looking for some good information (you should probably know what it is since this will be important later in this blog post). We then moved on to learn about the Chinese head tax and the Japanese Internment and went on multiple field studies to look at what they might have faced during these times. All 3 of these incidents were significant acts of racism in BC and so our task was to create a public memory/memorial that would recognize and remember these tragedy’s.


I worked with Jordan and Ryder on this project and we were assigned with making our Memorial to remember the Komagata Maru. Our goal was to make an eye appealing, interactive memorial while also educating the public on the incident. This was especially important to us because that is what we thought made a memorial worth seeing and hopefully making it something that the public would remember. We then started building the anchor which was first made up of clay but then broke 2 days before the exhibition. We managed to make a new anchor that looked less like the actual memorial but would at least be an idea of what it might look like. We also decided where the memorial  would lie if it was created and a 3d model that would really portray what it would look like at the proposed location. The hardest part for us was making the memorial interactive while also making it durable and  retainable to the weather. We decided that there were going to be silhouettes of people that were on the ship and although it doesn’t provide information, was a pretty cool feature for the community to try out. Here was our rough draft of the Anchor:

Once we had the plaques, models, and information down, we were finally ready to set up for the showcase.

Ultimately, I think that a memorial or a public memory needs to be informative, to ensure so they know what happened, influential so they are remembered, and noticeable so that communities and governments make sure it is not repeated.

If I were to make this project again, I would have maybe found a more interactive way of portraying it to the public. The other group who also made a memorial on this event made a very interesting display that allowed you to see how the passengers dreams died over the timeline of the tragedy.

If I were to have a little more time, or if I had used my time to max efficiency, I would have focused on how we could make it more interactive as  I thought our current idea was a little bit thrown in. The other thing I would change is our performance on presentation day.  If we did it again I think we could talk a little more on our design and give people plenty of room to look at it. 2/3 of our space was used for the plaques and our design tables would get pretty crowded at times causing people to pass through it completely.

So that’s going to wrap up this blog post but  there are still many to come. Happy new year!

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