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^{Estimated reading time: 2:20 minutes | By: Serena Alshayeb}

Each year, third-year Knowledge Integration (KI) students build a museum exhibit as their third-year capstone project. The experience is part of the three-part museum course and is the culmination of putting into practice what they learned around communication, project management and research.����

This year, students developed exhibits on issues related to the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Global Futures campaign. Over the course of eight months, they brainstormed, designed, and executed their vision into life-sized installations. Among the many amazing projects were Illuminating Perceptions and The Hobby House, which both delt with societal futures exploring how can we make communities and everyone within them thrive.��On March 17-22, the public was invited to engage, learn, and reflect on these issues.

Illuminating Perceptions: Safety in Cities at Night��
This exhibit shed light on the diverse perspectives surrounding safety in urban environments after dark. It asked questions like “what are ways the community can work towards building a safer city for everyone?” and prompted visitors to reflect on them by building bracelets and placing stickers on a likert scale. In this way, the exhibit encourages empathy and understanding from visitors exploring the factors that influence how people perceive safety.��

“It’s an incredible feeling to see such a long-term project come to life,” says Alia Nanji, Knowledge Integration student. “As a group, we each brought unique individual strengths and experiences that helped craft our exhibit into what it was. Being able to integrate our skillsets to create an interactive experience for our visitors was truly such a rewarding experience.”��

The Hobby House: Exploring the Benefits of Hobbies��
The Hobby House explored the transformative impact of hobbies on well-being. It highlighted how engaging in personal interests can improve mental health, foster creativity, and build stronger communities. By letting visitors listen to different instruments, answer questions, build paper planes, print a personal deep sky observing (DSO) certificate and more, this exhibit encourages visitors to reflect on the hobbies they enjoy and the benefits they provide in their daily lives.��

“We wanted people to leave with a deeper appreciation of how hobbies build confidence, foster connections, and support emotional well-being” said Kavya Srinivasan, Knowledge Integration student. “It was incredibly rewarding to see our initial idea evolve into a fully realized project, especially knowing that our visitors walked away with a renewed sense of the value of their hobbies."��

While new projects come to life each year, some live on after their weeklong showcase, such as Microbe Mystery. An installation created by a group of KI students for their capstone project during the pandemic, it is currently being used by ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Earth Sciences Museum as part of their Resource Responsibilities travelling program and will be displayed at the University of Toronto, Mining Matters and Carleton University later this year.����

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