Pack Your Bag

Team MHAKe

Pack Your Bag addresses the theme of Exploration through Interaction and the context of refugee experience when fleeing from danger.

Pack Your Bag is a interactive simulation of a refugee's experience as they flee their home or risk facing more danger by staying. The interaction space replicates a homely living environment that invites the user to come in and explore the individual items located around the room.

The concept explores the links we make between an object and how it represents meaning to us on a personal or societal level. The experience asks the user to reflect on how they define and judge the value of a person through the possessions they carry. This is a relfection of how many individuals judge and assign a 'worth' to refugees based on what they 'see' in the present without understanding the journey behind.

In the room, there are a number of 'items of significance' that each represent a value. Users need to decide which items they want to bring along and which to leave behind, taking into account if it is ’significance’ or ‘practicality’ that drives their decision making.

We aim to address how values that are deemed ‘valuable’ by a society might not align with important personal values of the individuals in the society.