About
Belonging Plaza is a mobile monument and pop-up commemorative tool, created by WSU Strategic Communications in collaboration with the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
The plaza is designed to move to different locations on campus, allowing student and community groups to highlight a variety of historically underrepresented or marginalized trailblazers and communities.
See an example of a previous Belonging PlazaWhy is the plaza important?
Belonging Plaza is a mobile monument and tool to bring visibility to underrepresented and historically marginalized communities, and it offers an opportunity to highlight their accomplishments and contributions for the betterment of civil society.
Once installed on campus or out in the community, the hosting group or organization has on opportunity to democratize historical narratives through the programming of this unique space.
By hosting events through this participatory research project, students can elevate stories of resistance and hope and add to the dialogue of past, present and future monument-making.
Getting Started
What do I need?
To reserve Belonging Plaza fill out the online form. Once your reservation form is received, a representative from the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) will reach out to you to review your submission.
Use the Volunteer Sign Up Google Sheet to organize volunteers.
Contact GoCreate two weeks ahead of your deadline to prepare for the plexiglass portion of this project.
Guideline FAQs for participating
A person or community that has not been appropriately recognized for their contributions or sacrifices.
Not necessarily. Fill out the form and let's talk it through.
Yes, the main goal of Belonging Plaza is to bring visibility to historically underrepresented individuals and communities.
All current WSU students are eligible for free access to GoCreate. You will need to complete training to use the facilities and complete the Plexigass panels for your subject.
Learn more at gocreate.comNeed help?
Send questions or concerns to belongingplaza@wichita.edu and info@gocreate.com.
Share
Tag us on Instagram @wsudiversity and @wichitastateu. We recommend you use #belongingplaza to share your photos and videos.
How do you remove, install and store the plaza?
- A representative from ODI or the Ulrich will assist in coordinating pickup and dropoff.
- Belonging Plaza is composed of 10 lightweight, hollow metal pillars, with attached hardware to hold a plexiglass plate on the angled top.
- Each pillar has a hose plugin on its side to fill it up with water for added weight and stability. Additionally, each pillar has a draining whole at the bottom with a removable plug. The water inside all pillars must be drained prior to returning them to storage. An ODI representative will coordinate with facilities staff to fill up the pillars after the panels’ configuration has been determined.
Plaques laser printing
There are 10 columns with 10 plexiglass plates. For individual subjects, we recommend that you use six plates to tell the story of your subject.
Develop your plates in Microsoft Word
Visuals on plates:
- Person's name
- Aspects: Publisher
- Aspects: Activist
- Aspects: Mother
- Aspects: Friend
- Aspects: Hobbies
Specs
- 150-200 words
- Use font Klavika Medium Condensed
- Margins setting narrow: -0.5 inches on all four sides
Telling the story of your subject
- Who is the person we want to memorialize?
- What kind of work did they do?
- What did they do in their community?
- What figure were they in their family?
- What kind of friend were they?
- What were their hobbies?
How to get the text to plaque
- When setting up the file for the text, save your Microsoft Word storytelling plates as a PDF.
- Transfer to Illustrator. Create a document or file that is the size of the plexiglass. Add your guidelines or rulers to the document, and copy and paste your text to the Illustrator file. Adjust your spacing in the text if needed. Change the text to outline, so the letters convert to a shape and are no longer live text. Save a copy of this as a pdf, and create the rest of the plaques from the same file. This file will be transferred to InDesign, which is the program that the laser printer uses to print at GoCreate. You will be etching the file and not cutting.
- Once at GoCreate, open your pdf in CorelDRAW and confirm that the file appears the same.
- Then click file > print > the cog button next to the file name. Next you will choose the epilogue printer settings.
Other helpful notes
- Call ahead and make a reservation at GoCreate
- Each plaque with text can take up to 30 minutes to print. Plan accordingly.
- You'll have to reserve the laser printer in order to have the words engraved into the plaque.
- With the previous experience of the Fall 2023 Belonging Plaza, we highly recommend that you don't laser etch a photo of the person due to issues with clarity.
Research
Ablah Library - Special Collections works closely with us to help find any information or pictures we can't find. Contact Mary at mary.nelson@wichita.edu.
Outdoor location
The preferred reservation spot is the spot on the northwest corner of the RSC. For additional spots available, visit wichita.edu/outdoorspaces.
There should be 20-foot clearance for emergency vehicles. When in doubt, ask.
Courtesy photo
Monique Gaines, The Sunflower