Polaris (working title)

the story of black settlement and the largest forced mass migration of a peoples in modern history remains unfinished. it also ended here, in London.

i am shooting a photo book, and have been for some time now, about Black Settlement in Southwestern Ontario. i would use the $1000 to have an app and website created. the app will have GPS coordinates all over Southwestern Ontario, where interested parties could locate and learn about a specific site within the region. many sites already long gone physically, yet the land remains and we live on top of it.

app/website users can plan routes all over the region. the app/website would link from The Elgin Settlement through to Ingersoll and on to Orro and Shanty Bay, where there are no shanty's today. the user can find schedules for events like the Labor Day weekend in Buxton, which should be on everyone's bucket list, emancipation day celebrations and stops in-between.

all roads lead back to The Fugitive Slave Chapel, here in London. central to the app/website will be efforts to raise awareness of London's own significant role in the story
There is no shortage of storytellers, academics and pastors in this neck of the woods with rich tales to tell of the Underground Railroad and African Settlement in Southwestern Ontario,. let's link up all that knowledge and make London's history part of the fabric that ties it all together.

Financé par London, ON (January 2016)