#thst2450

·      For my group’s hypothetical Change the city proposal, we decided we wanted to concentrate on Improving the  Guelph homeless shelters. Specifically, the conditions of these shelters. With the dropping temperatures in the winter, it is important that people have a safe and comfortable place to stay. The existing shelters are often overbooked and do not allow comfortable conditions for larger numbers of people to stay in. Due to the lack of space, people in need are often turned away. As a community, it is irresponsible to neglect people in need due to a lack of space.

·      To find a way to solve this issue, our group decided we could buy small houses around Guelph and convert them into homeless shelters that maximize bed space for people to stay, provide food and basic hygiene loot bags, as well as giving these people access to medical attention (have nurses at each station).  We would take on volunteers from the University of Guelph to help assist our social services workers and nurses. This would be a great way for students to gain volunteer experience in Guelph to put on their resumes, as well as allowing our organization to get the amount of people we need to run our organization. We would accept any food, clothing and bedding donations from the community of Guelph and partner with local thrift and second hand stores to get the supplies we need.

·      This picture is an example of our facilities.

·       In the winter the homeless face many issues with maintaining hygiene due to the snow and slush. Lots of individuals get trench foot. To solve this, we will be giving every visitor of our houses a clean pair of socks and shoes. This will be included in the bags we give everyone. Females also have the extra burden of dealing with periods and homelessness. Basic feminine hygiene products need to be distributed at our houses.

·      To specifically concentrate on helping many women with periods, our organization will partner with the Guelph Walmart. We will build a deal where if you buy specifically marked pads, tampons, diva cups ect… then one of the items will also go to the homeless shelter to give to a female in need. Also, after you go grocery shopping, there will be a machine developed (similar to the self checkout) where you scan your receipt. The machine detects any hygiene products (toothpaste, face wash, makeup, etc.) and calculates the total value of 5% of what you spent on these items. The entire Walmart  company will donate the 5% to go to one of our Guelph homeless shelters. This monetary amount will go towards maintaining the houses and costs associated with maintaining and growing our property.

Our organization:  NOT JUST.

 For our group’s “change the school” project we decided we wanted to address the way the school portrays mental health issues. People often display advertisements that say things like “feeling depressed?  Go outside! Do ___”. They portray mental illness and depression as something so curable if the person experiencing it would stop being lazy or try harder! This way of offering a “solution” to someone else’s chemical imbalance or situational reaction is harmful to anyone who has issues because it makes them feel like they just aren’t doing enough for themselves. In most cases, these people have tried everything under the sun to stop feeling how they’re feeling. Its insulting and ignorant to put up posters that downplay the feelings of depression and anxiety. Seeing posters that say “feeling sad? Go for a walk” hurts. Because it’s not just sadness. It's so much more complicated than that. Depression follows you every day. Sure, it wavers from bad to worse but it's not just going to disappear if someone drinks herbal tea or goes to “stress-busting Zumba”.  

 Our organization is called Not Just. We make a point of exposing all things on campus that downplay or “solve” mental health issues. People with depression are not just sad. If you have anxiety, you’re not just nervous. No walk I’ve ever taken had cured my mental health issues and the more people offer “cures” the more ignorant they sound. We take pictures of adds that are problematic to one’s understanding of mental illness. We display these pictures in our chosen media: Posters and social media Instagram account. We have the hashtag #notjust. We want to start with the Guelph campus and see a change in our community.  Ultimately, we want to expand the popularity of our organization to reach other Canadian schools. Our mission is to encourage people in other communities and schools to point out harmful portrayals of mental illness.

 We want followers of Not Just to take photos of toxic posters or ads they see and put them in our custom frames. They will type the word the ad says to reduce the illness. For example: in the template given below, the phrase “not just sad”.

We want supporters of our movement to tag the photo with the hashtag #notjust.

  Starting in Guelph, there are many instances when our group felt that mental illness was shown in a toxic or simplistic way. We found one poster hung up in South residence. The poster said “Feeling depressed? Have some coffee!”

 Unfortunately, the poster was torn down from the wall before we could go back and photograph it (someone else saw the obvious problems with this).

 For starters, the person or people who made this add suggest that depression is curable by a cup of coffee. Any person vaguely familiar with depression knows that it’s not curable by one instance of bliss. To suggest this implies that people suffering should just shut up and drink a coffee. It’s insulting to erase the severity of mental issues and reduce it to being erased by one sip of hot bean water.

In this add found on campus in the UC, the add implies that people can just stop worrying like it’s a switch they can turn off. I’m sure that people with anxiety aren’t making a conscious effort to keep worrying and this add is telling them to STOP.

I am improving my use of technology. I'm not one for video games and when my friend invited me over to her house to look at her new VR device, I was uninterested. I hated the idea of VR because I have a feeling this is where the future of technology is and I would prefer to embrace the physical world. I thought that thought video games and VR distract one from the real world and keep you from being productive. This close-mindedness changed when I found I could study for my academics using VR. My friend showed me Google Earth street view VR. I had my Art History midterm on my mind and when she asked me where in the world I wanted to go... I chose Florence, Italy. to my surprise, I zoomed into the streets of Florence and I “walked to” all of the main open-air sculpture gardens and saw the David and the clock tower in the main political square. it was amazing to see the places I had been studying in VR because it made the experience seem so real and as a result: memorable. When I took the test, I thought back to the places I  had seen and moved around in and the physical locations of all the artifacts. this acted as a great memory aid to increase my understanding of art history. I got to see the beauty of Florence without traveling there. and because I had a visual experience connected to the subject matter of my studies, I did very well on questions regarding the places I went to.  I think that VR could be a very positive tool in the future to educate young art historians and art historians. I wish that schools in the future will use VR to show students what they are studying. we are truly progressing out of the pictures in a textbook to a full-on experience that amplifies sensory impact and the retention of information. 

Florence, Italy 

Piazza della Signoria 

I have decided to reflect on the DIY / remix assignment. For this activity, I decided to concentrate on remixing my attitude towards a shape I made for studio art class. The project required us to make a shape cluster featuring a cone, cube, and prism. We had to first create this shape cluster on Sketchup, using accurate measurements and then scale it to real life and build it using construction cardboard. I made so many errors measuring angles and the inches of each side. I am horrible at measuring and building when it comes to geometry. The number of times I screwed up and freaked out making this project is too high to count. No project has ever made me feel so depressed and hopeless. I had several panic attacks when making this hell shape cluster. When it was finally done I felt relieved and accomplished. I debated throwing it in the garbage when I finished the project but I felt attached to all my effort. I decided I wanted to keep my shape cluster but seeing the dull color of white really brought me back to the times of building it. I decided that in order for me to keep my shape and remember this challenge in a positive light, I would paint the shapes in bright and happy colors. By covering the dull and triggering white color of the shape, I get to still keep my shape, yet also giving the shapes a new life.