1. To what extent did I choose an issue that I genuinely care about? I definitely chose a topic I care about. I see people cultural appropriating a lot on social media and it makes me upset because these people clearly don’t understand what they’re doing, what they’re wearing and by it’s wrong. After this project, I will definitely use my knowledge to my advantage and try to educate people that cultural appropriate.
2. How does my proposal align with my own strengths, interests, especially in light of what I’m thinking about doing for my action project for senior project? My proposal aligns with my own interests because I have seen a few art projects that have the meaning behind them that cultural appropriation is wrong and I feel inspired to do something like that myself. For example one of the pictures I put on my part 3 are art pieces that I am inspired by and I wanted to do something similar to that. For my senior project, I don’t think my action project is going to be an art piece but it has opened my eyes to the different possibilities I could do for an action piece.
3. What did I learn from this process that will help me with my senior project? This process has taught me how taking all the parts in a project are better to take one step at a time so you can stay focused on one thing and not be distracted by anything else. I also learned how much research and time goes into writing papers and doing the actual research part of the topic. a. Research skills?My research skills have gotten better throughout this project because I now know what to look for when I’m looking for academic sources.
b. Ways of being effective in making an impact?“A picture says a thousand words”. I learned that art can convey many messages and can be controversial. I watched a TedTalk about it and how art can start many conversations and mean many things to different people.
4. What was the most valuable/informative/interesting part of this assignment? The most interesting part of this project to me was the research part because I learned more about what cultural appropriation means and how people and companies contribute to it. I learned about multiple companies use cultures for their own profit for a campaign and things like that. I also learned about the exact definition of cultural appropriation and how there’s a history behind it. For example, white people being the people that have oppressed many cultures for hundreds of years and for us to use other cultures to our own advantage without being apart of them, is in a way repeating history.
5. What is one thing I could have done to improve this project the most? Something I could have done better (which is always a problem with me) is prioritizing my time better with the assignments in this project. I think I did a slightly better job during this project than I usually do, but I still could’ve done a better job. In the beginning, I didn’t know what I wanted to pick so I procrastinated and then when I did pick my topic I didn’t know if it was even an issue I could find research on. I ended up finding some research on cultural appropriation so it ended up being fine, but I could have spent my time better at the beginning when I was picking an issue.