One Thousand Cranes

One+Thousand+Cranes

Chloe Cope, Former Co-Editor in Chief

As students entered the front doors of the school Thursday morning and walk down the ramps towards the student center, they noticed a trail of hundreds of paper cranes following their path overhead. This was not a random or meaningless art project. Inspired by an ancient Japanese legend promising good luck and happiness to whoever folds one thousand origami cranes, this display of folded pages from Royal Banner issues is the new marketing campaign for advertising the school magazine’s website.

Senior Ray McVicker created the idea for this campaign based off of an ancient Japanese legend. According to this legend, whoever creates a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish from the gods. More commonly, people perceive the legend as one that promises luck and happiness, or well-being and recovery to those who are sick or injured. McVicker adapted this idea for the purposes of the Royal Banner by crafting the cranes out of Royal Banner pages and hanging them in the student center, almost as a way to bring luck to the publication’s website.

“I have always seen the student center as this space that would be really cool to do a three dimensional installation,” he said. “[The crane campaign] would be a great way to fill my dream of doing that and get the whole student body involved around something when everyone’s pretty stressed out.”

With help from freshmen Lucia Gomez, Benton Johnson and Ella MacClune, McVicker planned every last detail of the project, from cutting hundreds of squares of paper to creating posters explaining the concept.

“It’s something that people can relate to,” said Johnson. “People will be more reminded of the Royal Banner. Every time they see cranes, it’ll ring a bell in their head.”

Both the Royal Banner and Lance staffs worked tirelessly for three days folding cranes in class, as well as in their free time. Newspaper adviser Sarah Zerwin even folded the cranes as she taught her senior AP literature classes this week.

Above all, McVicker wants to use the art installation not only to bring awareness to the Royal Banner website, a source of news and entertainment available to students, produced entirely by students, but to connect the school community and bring luck and happiness to the building as finals week, as well as its inherent stress and bustle, approaches.

McVicker said, “I hope the project looks cool, but I hope mainly that it creates a better sense of community in Fairview and it inspires other students to do things that involve the school.”