The cafeteria at Garibaldi Secondary School will have some new colourful tiles added to the ceiling.
Grade 12 student Sakura Daughton has spent the past year painting every single flag in the world on the three ceiling tiles.
She got the idea for the project from a game she would play with her friends where they would show each other flags and then have to guess the country.
In the hall outside the cafeteria, there are flags for all of the international students who attend the school. However, Daughton thought, there were other students from smaller countries in the world who were not represented, nor students who are simply proud of their heritage.
So, when she found out that any student at the school could paint the ceiling tiles in the cafeteria, she thought why not design something that is representative of everyone?
“So now there’s like pretty much no way your flag isn’t somewhere in the school and I thought everyone could be represented,” explained Daughton.
“I know I’m from technically a lot of places and most of my flags aren’t anywhere in the school and now they can be,” noted the 17-year-old whose own heritage includes Japanese, English, Scottish, and German.
Daughton has painted 197 flags on the three tiles, each tile measuring about 50 centimetres by 100 centimetres – plus one square that says Rebels 2024 for the school. That is 66 flags per tile.
“It’s every country that’s legally considered a country,” she explained, giving the example of Scotland and England, which are both included in the United Kingdom flag.
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The most challenging thing about the project was sticking to it. Daughton has spent practically every day painting the flags for just over a year, and she is still going.
A staff member at the school has a stencil maker and is going to help her with the flags that have intricate details on them, like the Guatemalan flag that has a crest in the middle that Daughton is unable to draw by hand, or the Mongolian flag which has a castle in the centre.
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Daughton is aiming to have the three tiles finished before she graduates. But even though she is coming down to the wire, she is happy she embarked on the project, and she is hoping that students who come after her at Garibaldi will now see themselves represented in her flags.
“I think it’s important to do stuff like this, everyone’s got a story, everyone’s got somewhere where they came from, and oftentimes they don’t get represented, especially smaller countries,” said Daughton.
“I think that it’s just important to make sure everyone gets included, everyone gets a spot on the tile,” she said.
