|
|
Nov. 22, 2013
Designs that tell stories
Students’ Holocaust posters win global prizes.
OLGA LIVSHIN
This year, two design students from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (ECUAD), Caitlin McGinn and Carling Hind, won first and second place, respectively, in Keeping the Memory Alive: Journeys Through the Holocaust, an international Holocaust poster competition. Their posters were selected out of hundreds of submissions from around the world. The top 16 designs are being exhibited at more than 90 locations around the world, including at United Nations headquarters in New York, Geneva and Vienna, and at the European Commission in Brussels.
The competition is a joint project of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which Canada chairs this year. The other collaborators include Yad Vashem, the London Jewish Cultural Centre in the United Kingdom, the European Shoah Legacy Institute in Czech Republic and the Holocaust and United Nations Outreach Program.
Both winners learned about the competition from ECUAD typography instructor Peter Cocking, who was instrumental in involving the students in the competition, according to Hind. And, after Citizenship and Immigration Canada asked the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre to provide educational support to Canada’s poster applicants, ECUAD hosted Adara Goldberg, VHEC education director, who facilitated a seminar called Thinking About the Holocaust to “increase participants’ understanding of Holocaust history and memory.”
“The student participants struck me as insightful, curious and creative,” Goldberg said of the experience at Emily Carr. “All expressed a commitment to presenting the complexities of Holocaust memory with accuracy and sensitivity – truly a special group of artists.”
About his involvement with the competition, Cocking said, “I have a close friend whose grandfather was a Holocaust survivor and I know something of how that tragedy continues to affect people’s lives to this day. But, mostly, I encouraged students to enter [the competition] because this seemed like a good opportunity for them to learn something. Design education doesn’t necessarily introduce students to complex moral/ethical/social/cultural/historical/political issues such as those that surround the Holocaust, but I think it should. After all, in the end, we’re not just educating designers, we’re educating citizens – people. We started out with 17 students participating, but because of conflicting commitments, not everyone completed the project. In the end, I believe we submitted 12 finished posters.”
Hind said that her interest in the topic was high. “Peter [Cocking] booked a workshop room for about six hours, for us to come and work on our posters,” she told the Independent. “I was on the waiting list; almost didn’t make it. Eventually, some people dropped out, and there was space for me. I started my work on the poster by researching the Yad Vashem website. I looked at their database of names, and those names spoke to me. They’re so beautiful, so authentic, true to their heritage.”
She also had a personal experience that came to bear on her decision to get involved. “I had a roommate whose grandpa fled from the Nazis when he was a child. I talked to her, and she told me about him. He wasn’t a Jew, but his name sounded … Jewish. He had to change it to keep safe.”
At first she wasn’t sure about the concept of her poster, but the names kept calling to her. “I feel that sometimes individuals are lost in the mass of people who suffered from the Holocaust. By using their names, I honored them personally. I started out by typing the names from the database, one after another. It was a challenge to communicate such a complex theme. I followed my gut feeling.
“I always had friends of different backgrounds, from different cultures. It resonates with who I am. That’s why I tried to identify the people through their names. Besides, I love typography and I wanted to use texts, letters,” she added. “In my poster, the names are trailing off the page, reflecting that the project is still ongoing. They’re still uncovering new names for the database.”
McGinn also learned about the competition from Cocking.
“I heard that he was a high-quality teacher, but I never had a class with him before the competition. Now I do.” Even before she was his student, she said, “I jumped at the opportunity to work with him.” McGinn attended the seminar facilitated by VHEC and participated in the workshop to create her poster.
“During my research, I read some articles on the subject,” she said. “I was especially interested in the Yad Vashem’s archives of documents. I thought: that’s how our generation can find out what happened, discover lost relatives – through documents. That’s how we can understand the Holocaust. My concept for the poster involved visual representations of documents, hundreds of them. Actually, I used three documents for the same person, and a photograph at the bottom. Unfortunately, the photo is of a different person. I didn’t have time to look for his documents. We were cutting too close to the deadline as it was.”
The timing of Cocking’s workshop ended up not being convenient for some students because it was during spring final exams, she told the Independent, but she carved the time out of her schedule because she has always been interested in the theme of social justice.
“I’ve always been passionate about justice. After high school, I worked for nonprofit organizations, traveled a lot, did humanitarian work and worked with children. Then, I was in the film industry. I wanted to make documentaries, tell stories that motivate people into actions, interpret hard concepts through visual media.”
She brought the same passion into her design ideas. “After I graduate, I don’t want to work in advertising. My dream work would be in the communication department of the UN, or maybe a similar smaller organization, on the local level. Or publishing. I want my designs to tell stories.”
Her poster definitely tells a compelling story, and Yad Vashem already uses a portion of the image in the header of their web page about the competition.
After the winners were announced, McGinn and Hind flew to Toronto to the IHRA conference, where they received their awards during a special dinner ceremony on Oct. 8. Jason Kenney, minister of employment, social development and multiculturalism, presented the awards. The next day, they attended a special evening of music and commemoration in recognition of Holocaust survivor educators.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
^TOP
|
|
