What have we learned throughout then entire last two months? It was all shown at our PLP exhibition this past Thursday. Our driving question for this entire unit was “how can I convince my neighbor that their life is not complete until they’ve experienced what I’ve experienced”. This is because we went on a 12 day trip around BC in May. We had so many experiences that were different from any I’d seen before. I created a presentation of my learning, which I have translated into this post for anyone who was not able to see it in person!
My Experience
The part of the trip that affected me the most was visiting small town. My answer to our driving question is that I believe everyone should experience how life is in a small town. While we did not get the full experience of small-town life, talking and learning things from different people in these small towns really helped me come to this conclusion. I’ve lived in a fairly urban area my whole life and seeing these small towns changed my life. Seeing the sense of community these small towns had really affected my perspective on them. After hearing from residents of these small towns, I was curious to see just what life was like there and how they supported each other. Starting out on our trip, I expected that I would be bored by the small towns, but they captured my interest.
Lytton
On the first day, we stopped in a town called Lytton. This town has a population of around 250 people and is visually very small, with a single grocery store, a bank, and a couple of small cafes. It’s the kind of town where everyone knows everyone. While we were in Lytton we stopped at the Lytton Chinese history museum. What really inspired me here was just how passionate the owner was about this place. This surprised me because, considering how small this town was, I didn’t expect there to be a need or a want from anyone for there to be a museum in it. However, The passion that this museum owner showed was remarkable to me. She showed us how to play various Chinese instruments, as well as showed off many historical items.
Wells
One of the next interesting small towns we found was Wells. We were driving to Barkerville, a small ghost town where the Cariboo gold rush was located when we stopped in Wells for dinner. Wells has a small population of around 245 people with weird wacky looking colourful looking buildings. we stopped at a little restaurant to eat dinner, and what we found out there was really interesting to me. As we were eating, probably a dozen people came in, and everyone knew each other. They would stop and have conversations with each other. We even found out it was a mans birthday that night and so the entire restaurant sang him happy birthday, and he thanked nearly each and every single person. This showed me just how strong their sense of community was. Wells was a little bit different from Clinton in that all of the buildings were very near each other. This made the town fairly small in size as well as population.
The Hazeltons
A few days later we stopped at a place called Hazelton. The Hazelton population is only 270 people. We stopped at a little community farmers market. For a town with such a small population, I was surprised at how busy and bustling the market was. There were many different stalls, from personal businesses to people just selling what you may find at a garage sale: random personal items of theirs. Although we didn’t get to explore very much more of Hazelton, this market alone showed just how strong the community is there.
Our Podcast
We took everything that we learned on this trip and created a 5 minute podcast about our experiences. I am awfully proud of how mine turned out. You can listen to it right here!
My Exhibition Display
I displayed my learning through an interactive artifact. I created a carnival spinner from recycled materials and then created challenge cards to go with it. These cards had examples of way to increase community connections. I received quite a bit of feedback throughout the night, from “you should have made the spinner all green” (?) to “these challenge cards are really interesting, but I think they’d be even better if you showed steps to complete the challenges”. Overall though, I did a great job on my work and learned a lot.
Finding Community
What drove me through this project the most was seeing how community affected individuality. Community can be for either practical or comforting purposes. A practical example could be relying on others for basic needs or goods, compared to having a safe space to interact with others. The word community comes from the root “common” and the suffix “unity”. It quite literally means to find a common unity. Community can come from almost anywhere, from neighbourhoods to religious groups to clubs.
Something that is important to keep in mind, however, is that communities can become suffocating. As soon as connections become so strong that they are the only thing in peoples lives, prejudices can form and people can become cut off from the outside world. Individuals need to remember that their community isn’t necessarily the only or best community. What really helped me understand this was travelling to small towns in BC and seeing how different communities can co-exist without us even noticing. This was a major turning point of the trip for me, and something I will continue to think about.
Then, why do we even need community? Community can save us from isolation, and add companionship to our lives. They can also be a safe space to confide and find comfort in. They can show us order and reason, and support us through our lives. Quite bluntly, we need community in order to co-exist.