Shifts and Changes

By Sarah DeLaronde, 1st year MDP student

My practicum with the Indigenous Knowledge and Wisdom Centre (IKWC) was so inspiring. Being able to create social media content really shifted the way I think about social media. Social media can be used to catapult Indigenous businesses, organizations into the spotlight. Creating content for social media can be complicated; you have to choose what would be most appealing, simple and easy to read. Academic language shouldn’t be used as it would make the content inaccessible for people outside of academia and wouldn’t translate well into a social media post. Taking time everyday to focus on posts and thinking about what would be most aesthetically pleasing really worked well for me. I utilized my experience as a traditional maker to choose the right colours. 

Lastly, I also did some research on content creation to create the most effective posts. Social media can be utilized to get information out quicker and to a larger audience. By bringing attention to IKWC as a whole, more people would be able to get involved with the organization and they could, in turn, take on more work and improve their communities in this way. IKWC’s goal is to preserve knowledge so it can be carried forward to the next generations. Social media can reach the right age groups where youth start to self determine and become interested in who they are. Social media is truly innovative tool that I hope to improve on as I move forward through MDP. I would like to eventually do more social media content creation as a means to teach youth about their cultures.