I have been thinking a lot lately about lasting impacts for people who view the PNW Community Coral Reef. As I watched people looking at the reef through the Footwise window, I realized that, although they stopped and enjoyed it and may have talked about it briefly, what was the lasting impact of that interaction? Perhaps this was driven home even more when I visited the Mulyana exhibit. Families “oooh” and “ahhhd” as they marveled at the incredible workmanship and beauty but how many stopped and thought about the deeper meaning?
I guess that is the chance you take when you try to communicate a message through art. Will it change anything?
So this has got me thinking about ways to make people linger longer at our installation. How can we increase the ways that people can interact and learn. How can we actually make any difference once our installation moves on?
I do plan to put together a “scavenger hunt” for people to find specific corals, creatures and even garbage on our reef. I plan to pepper some facts in along the way so perhaps people will take away some kernal of knowledge. I also want to show a documentary during the reef’s installation so that folks can watch the documentary in the auditorium and then walk through the reef which will be just down the hall.
There are many excellent documentaries and discussions online that talk about the destruction of the coral reefs and plastic pollution in the ocean. If you are creating pieces for our reef and would like a general documentary on coral reefs with beautiful shots of corals and fish, I recommend this documentary on Youtube. I also recommend Chasing Coral as a good opener for the climate crisis facing coral reefs and the Woods Hole Institute Ocean Encounters discussion on ocean plastics.
Since we are based in Oregon, I would like to show the documentary Saving Atlantis. You are able to purchase a single viewing of it which I encourage you to do. We will be purchasing the rights to show it to an audience at the Lincoln City Cultural Center and I have decided to put up a fund raising page to help me cover the screening rights. If you are interested in helping out, please visit our fundraising page.
Also, if you have any other educational ideas that we could tie into our installation, please feel free to drop me a line!