Its presentation time! Time for me to whip out one of the two dresses I own and put my best foot forward. CAP CON 2016 is a conference in which students involved in the Coordinated Arts Program for first year students at UBC get to present their work. As my group settled into our spot and set up our power point on a local BC artist Jack Shadbolt, I noticed the two very hip girls that took their place next to our booth. They were in the media studies program and I was immediately intrigued. I noticed that they were speaking Spanish and a little bit of my home, Miami, came back to me-  a place where Spanish floats through the air where ever you are.

The two hip girls, Estephania Solis and Lara Blacklock, presented a project that  allowed their subjects to tell stories while filming the subjects drawing them out. It focused on culture and what happens when different cultures interact. It started with someone explaining their experience growing up all around the world and how they felt like because they were always moving they never felt rooted place or culture enough to claim it as their own. The second instalment is what really resonated with me. The second instalment was speaking about how people of different cultures find it difficult to assimilate into a culture of the place they have immigrated to. They gave the example of the cultural clash between Canadians and Japanese and Chinese immigrants in Vancouver. What I found particularly interesting, in the presentation and in the conversation I had with the girls afterwards, was the focus on the language barrier between cultures and the difficulty in learning the language if immigrants  happen to move to a country that has a different dominant language. The reason this instalment really stuck with me is because it reminded me so much of home.

Back in Miami most of the people I knew, restaurants I ate at, or music I listened came from Cuba. We also had very large South American and Mexican populations as well. The thing all these cultures have in common, is Spanish. A lot of the older generation immigrants did not learn Spanish, but their children did- the mix of the two cultures created a hybrid language mixing Spanish and English, affectionally called: ‘spanglish.’ Miami is the city it is today because these two cultures have had to figure out how to co-exsist together and  there was not full assimilation into the American culture. It was intriguing to see two students observations of a phenomena occurring around them can be relatable to a situation I am so familiar with, even though it is happening across the continent.

Aside from that presentation I really liked seeing projects from student that were in my CAP program or at least projects that had subjects touched on in my CAP program, and the different perspectives they offered. I particularly enjoyed Ameers presentation on the Black Lives Matter movement and his insight on the role ethnic nepotism has in the conflict. I think it is great that in such a large university there is a platform for students to share the work that they are proud of and engage in conversations with other students about their work. This was an event that I really saw the way CAP can connect together subjects to provide a well rounded education. The interdisciplinary aspect of CAP has shifted the way I take on most subjects I have learned in my time at school, which is I think the most valuable thing I have gained from CAP all year.