Preparing A Cultural Exposition

If you teach subjects such as Languages, Literature or History, you might feel inclined to prepare cultural activities once in a while. There are practical reasons for this… It’s good for you and it’s good for your faculty in several ways. For you, as a teacher, it’s always interesting to put feathers in your cap. Any opportunity to score points in new areas might come in handy later, working in future projects 😉

For the faculty it’s good to show that they are truly engaged in promoting knowledge and blah, blah… but they might also enjoy sticking it to another university… like: “Hey guys at the neighboring campus… Do you have a literary exposition about Pablo Neruda? No? Do you even know who he is? Mwhahahah! Are you too busy discovering the wheel and… and… fire and… Neanderthal stuff? Eh? Are you?” (Yeah… academics are not very good at gloating) 🙁

You don’t need a lot of money to organize something cool… The main thing during an exposition is to present enough material to cover a given space (true that… double true! The space they give you will actually determine the amount of material you need… so don’t go around asking for whole floors). Most of the times, the faculties will give you some money (spare change) to prepare something small, you can complement it with additional funds if you feel like looking for them, but any purchase you make will have to be perfectly accounted for, so keep duplicates of all the paperwork for any item you buy or borrow. This would be some cool example for an exposition about Pablo Neruda (I’m not going to be too specific because… you know… I have limited space)

1. Prepare a detailed plan to explain the exposition. It should include documents, images, ideas for items, and different options depending on the space and length of the project. The presentation should be perfectly planned in order to execute it flawlessly given the chance.

2. Acquire the items you need… In this particular case, a first edition of Pablo Neruda from 1948 costs 70 USD + 28 USD with the shipping to Europe… Yes, I’m assuming you are in Europe because I am quite ethnocentric… Calculate your own shipping expenses and stop complaining! :p

3. Add items from the historical period in question. Most visitors enjoy the idea of getting a real experience. Anyone can make an exposition about Neruda and be moderately successful at it, but if you find out which tobacco brand he was smoking, which coins were used during his life, which items from his geographical area are affordable etc. you can prepare a cool section: “Neruda and his time” with real stuff 🙂

Result: The first edition inside an illuminated showcase with a cool sign: “Please, do not touch, thank you”, radio recordings of his interviews gently spread by the sound system of the room, a huge portrait of the author in the entrance… images of his life on the sides, information panels everywhere… Oh! Look! His favorite tobacco and OH GOD! Is that a document personally signed by him? 😮 Of course! He was an ambassador for several years… it’s like having his presence in this very room… All these experiences in my humble faculty… masterfully organized by someone who obviously followed very good advice from a blog in jobs.ac.uk… *the crowd claps in awe to your exposition* “You have done well myyyyyy apprentice…”