Miami, Florida, United States
Inspired by the typical reaction to a crime scene, our proposal “And Then There Were None” will get people aware of the fact that we as human beings are diminishing our plant life in our urban city, Miami. We also want more people, especially students, to take responsibility of our actions and to plant a tree during the time of Arbor Day. To inspire young people to take action by helping our global environment will lead to a generation that’s devoted to environmental conservation. Our idea will be set up into two phases.
Phase 1: We will creatively construct an installation at the heart of our school, where the entire student body passes by and eats around it on the daily basis; this will be the perfect stage to set up a “crime scene.” In our desired location, there is a triangular low-leveled fountain where we will empty out and draw with environmental friendly materials the outline of the form of a general plant, like what crime scene investigators do when there’s a corpse on the ground; they outline it with white chalk. We will also leave fake blood stains around the outline of the plant so people can easily notice that the plant died here. There will be a “Crime Scene – Do Not Cross” tape surrounding the triangular fountain, so it’ll be another element that will attract more attention to the scene. Surrounding the fountain, there are about five palm trees that overlook our crime scene, so with that in mind, we want to draw faces on recycled material and place it on the palm trees at a level that’s both interesting and intimidating. These faces will have frightened, angry, and sad expressions, all looking down at the crime scene. This phase will be set up in a day, it’s important to us to keep it random and surprising to the students at our school. Our mission for this phase is to make this as guerrilla as possible, so that people can be shocked and intrigued by it and also leave them wondering, what can they do to help.
Phase 2: One or two weeks will have passed by with the crime scene installation still in place and by then, it will have attracted the attention of the entire student body along with the faculty and staff of the school. Furthermore, our next step is to find a solution for our initial phase, where we in way, blamed human society for the destruction of plant life in this urban environment. We decided that they can make up for it by planting a tree, in this case, a small Baldcypress sapling. Baldcypresses are adaptable to wet or dry conditions, so they can virtually be planted anywhere, plus, they also grow to become beautiful trees which apparently are great for urban areas. We will order 500 6-inch Baldcypress saplings from the ArborDay.org website, and yes, we said five hundred. We decided to choose saplings instead of seeds because anybody can give a bag a seeds and it’s more enjoyable to take home with you an actual baby tree that’s 6 inches tall. Therefore, we will deconstruct the crime scene, clean out the fake blood stains, take down the crime scene tape and we will set up the 500 saplings inside the empty fountain and around the perimeter of the fountain until we reached the space’s functionality. Whatever that is left from the 500 saplings will be held in storage on school grounds and with every passing day, the saplings on display will be taken home by a student and will be planted in their backyard, so we will be re-stocking them on the daily basis. Around the circumference of the pot holding the sampling, will be a sign that says “Take Me”, which will be printed on recycled paper. We will switch out the palm tree’s depressing and negative facial expressions with positive and exciting expressions that will make every student taking a sapling home feel good about themselves. This phase will hopefully be around the same days as Arbor Day, and it could be set up in a day. Our mission for this phase is to encourage students to take home with them a sapling and plant it in their backyards. We also want to achieve our goal of planting 500 new trees in Miami, where “green spaces” are limited.
