UNCOVERING UNION EXHIBITION

Alumni Check-In | Elizabeth Cytko

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People walking outside of Union Station. 2018.
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Cytko

Writing about the exhibition I created with fellow classmates is bittersweet. The winter semester of 2020 certainly ended abruptly. We did not get to attend many of the exhibition openings of our peers, and sadly have mostly parted ways without the chance to properly say goodbye. I want to acknowledge the hard work of my classmates, and say thank you for providing me with such an amazing time at the Faculty of Information. In the future I look forward to seeing everyone again, and celebrating our successes!

A group of attentive students on the Ottawa Museum trip. November 2019.
Three cheers for my amazing cohort!
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Cytko

My group, which includes myself, Erika Ilse and Karen Macke, is fortunate — our exhibition is digital. This meant that while we were not able to meet physically, we still had privilege of Skyping and putting together the website Uncovering Union.

The Battle for Union Station.
Courtesy of the City of Toronto Archives, Courtesy of City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 265, Series 1269, Subseries 7, File 2

For those interested in how a digital exhibition is put together, I will highlight some of the steps, so in future you can create one too!

1. Be on the same page as your team. Figure out your themes and what you want your exhibition to say. With Union Station we narrowed our focus to the social history, of the people who have a connection to the place. 
2. Make sure you know who your audience is. This will affect the style of writing and what sort of information you will include. If you will work with an educator, include them from the beginning! This will make the process much smoother!
3. Research! This involved delving deep into Proquest to dig up newspapers, taking out every book possible, and visiting the local archives! I spent most of my time at the City of Toronto archives reading up on my three stories – the archivists there are friendly and very helpful. 
4. Set a word limit and stick to it while writing your articles. 
5. Editing! Editing! Editing! Sometimes it is necessary to cut amazing ideas in order to fit the word count. That's ok! If you have too much information to share you're on the right track.
6. Somewhere around here, or maybe even earlier think about the overall design of the website. Choose your colours, fonts, logos! 
7. Make sure you have all the proper permissions in place for the images and multimedia aspects you plan to use. 
8. User testing! Have some people unfamiliar with the website go through it and make sure everything works. 
9. Launch!

In between all of those steps you are meeting your team at least once a week, and checking in with everyone. Things will unexpectedly crop up (such as a worldwide pandemic) so it’s important to give yourself some extra time.

Union Station food court, 2019.
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth  Cytko

This exhibition has given us the opportunity to peek into Toronto history, and learn how interconnected Union Station is to the very fabric of the city. Uncovering Union centres on nine social histories with stories that vary from soldiers returning from war and new families coming together to civic activists uniting to save the station from destruction. The station itself is not just a terminus for the end of a journey, but the impetus for a new one.

If you miss the hustle and bustle of Toronto life, those moments where you could walk down the street and pass by others whose stories you could barely imagine, I invite you to view our exhibition.