War is glamorous and fun. It is a patriotic adventure for the bold. Or is it?

For our final humanities project of PLP 9, we explored the contrasting narratives of war. The project was called Dulce et Decorum Est, which means “it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” The driving question was “how can we make the contrasting narratives of war come alive for an audience?” We would explore this by creating a WW1 museum for our 2023 spring exhibition.

We started this project by studying museums. We went to the Museum of North Vancouver and learned about what makes a good museum. We also studied WW1. Click here to read a paragraph I made about the contrasting narratives of war.

We then decided what we wanted to make for our museum exhibit. I chose to focus on the myth vs the reality of war. I chose to make my exhibit about the myth vs the reality of being a pilot during WW1. I chose to make a diorama with two sides. One side would represent the myth of being a pilot and the other would represent the reality. I had a lot of fun creating this diorama. The idea was that you could turn the box, and from one side, the planes were flying glamourously. On the other side, the planes were burning. It turned out really well.

I ended up failing however. I forgot to take good photos of my exhibit, so I won’t be able to share what my diorama ended up looking like. Click here to read the writing that was on my diorama.

Day of our exhibition, we got everything ready and made sure we had a functional museum. We welcomed guests in, and it was a successful night.

Despite my fail, I was happy with the outcome of this project. If you read my MPOL this year, you would know that my goal for the rest of this year is to enjoy my learning. This means that I am trying to have fun while learning and working on projects. I can confidently say that I enjoyed all parts of this project.

War is damaging, dangerous, and distressful, yet somehow it is portrayed as glamorous and fun. It is interesting that some people still believe lies about war told over a hundred years ago. It is said that war is a fun adventure for the patriotic, when in reality, it is deadly and traumatizing.