I have two ideas to pitch. Both these potential project ideas sprung out of the speed-dating and so I need to put forth the disclaimer that neither are wholly my own.

  1. Anna had talked about her interest in artifacts and memory, which brought us both to think about monuments. Whether it is contemplating the removal the Robert E Lee Statue that sparked a deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, or the removal of the statue of Halifax founder Edward Cornwallis who was otherwise known for attempting genocide on the Mi’kmaq people of Nova Scotia, the understanding of these monuments, the addition of news ones, removal of others, are changing the physical representation of memory and history. The idea would be to create a virtual map (probably concentrated on a smaller geographic area) that tracks the changing views on existing monuments, where applicable their removal, or if they have been updated to better reflect our modern interpretation of the past. The map would include an image, a general decription, a time line of chnages where applicatble, and may even link to video, news items or other images relevant to protests or changes. Google maps, Ingress and (subsequently, because it’s the same map) Pokemon Go already players collected data about the whereabouts of monuments and historic sites to work from. This project would likely be of interest to social activists, historians, those in a field where human rights are studied, and perhaps artists.

  2. A second idea comes from the memory box project. There have been a number of clashes between Indigenous protestors and the crown, where police and the army are called in. In the past documentation including notes on what is occurring, video and images were limited and shot by the press, and held in archives. Media reporters’ video and pictures are to a large extent shared online. As well, with cell phones people involved in the protest add to the public record primarily on Youtube and Twitter but also on Facebook. The media for these events however is not in any order. The idea would be to take an event like the fracking protest at Elsipogtog which began as a peaceful protest in the summer of 2013, growing into a blockade, and ending with a face-off with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in October 17, 2013. The idea is to scrape images video and text from social media and put it into a chronological order. This would be of interest to those in the field of history, Indigenous studies, film, and other fields related to the environment or human rights studies.