A winter exhibition is never just a display of learning. It’s a production, it’s a scramble, it’s the biggest mental and physical test that PLP has to offer. While it may seem like an exhibition is all thought out, most of it is the result of last minute realizations, things breaking, and Plan B’s. Luckily, PLP learners are trained specifically for these types of situations. Failing and making new plans on the go is a PLP specialty and that was very apparent in the 2022 Winter exhibition.
(Me at the exhibition)
Avatar was the theme for this year’s exhibition which was a day before the sequel to the original movie came out. We explored several themes of avatar and expressed them through different rooms around the school. I was in the Avatar room, presenting our group’s memorial on the Komagata Maru.
Overall, I would say that the exhibition could’ve gone worse. There was a big last minute issue with the rooms but we managed to pull it together and make it an enjoyable experience for our exhibition visitors. I think everybody felt that in some sense, there wasn’t enough time to prepare. Moving on to the next exhibition, I think we should definitely start the planning process a few weeks before and make sure everything moves smoothly and doesn’t have the potential to be problematic.
The project our class was presenting at the exhibition was called Ology of Apology. Our class learned about past wrongs of Canada and specifically British Columbia. The three main wrongs we learned about were the Komagata Maru incident, the Chinese Head Tax, and Japanese Internment. We learned about each of these past wrongs as a class, then separated into three groups to learn more specifically about one. I chose to learn more about the Komagata Maru.
In keystone 1, we learned about our event from a historical perspective. Using primary source documents, we made a keynote telling the story of our event. Here is the keynote that I made telling the story of the Komagata Maru.
In keystone 2, we made an audio clip explaining an ethical judgment on why we think our event was wrong considering historical perspective. Here you can listen to my audio clip and the script is below.
After our research and keystones were done, we got into groups of three and began the final project for the exhibition. I was in a group with Julian and Sepaus. Our end goal was to create a memorial for the Komagata Maru. Previously in the project, we looked at apologies, what makes a good one, and how easy it is to mess one up. Having all this knowledge, we brainstormed about different types of memorials and what would be an appropriate one for the Komagata Maru. It was difficult to narrow it down, but in the end we decided to make a piece of art.
The vision for our memorial changed around quite a bit. Originally, we were going to do a black and white gradient for the background, but realized we didn’t have any white paper. We then decided to change the white to red, and make a gradient going from black to red, to symbolize leaving the darkness and famine of India, and going to the bright red light of Canada. Using my artistic experience, I took our project home and make a drawing of the Komagata Maru. After carefully crafting a drawing of the Komagata Maru that took hours and was my pride and joy, I took it to school the next day and destroyed it. 🥲
Our memorial demonstrated the Komagata Maru leaving India and going to Canada. However, as it left the dark side of the boat, it was getting cut up and destroyed in the front, symbolizing how the tragedy of the Komagata Maru destroyed the passengers.
Our memorial was presented at the avatar exhibition. We presented our learning to tons of parents, and it was interesting how few knew about the Komagata Maru. One of my biggest takeaways from this project was that more needs to be done to educate about our past wrongs. The Komagata Maru happened right here in Vancouver, not that long ago. It’s shocking how little this is being taught and schools need to educate earlier on about the Komagata Maru, Chinese Head Tax, and Japanese Internment.
That’s it for this blog, I hope you enjoyed reading maybe learned something!
Sincerely,
Me
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