KEC student wins achievement award

Dec. 13, 2023

The future of gaming is being developed right here in Winnipeg!

Quinn Davis, a Grade 12 student at Kildonan-East Collegiate, is one of this year’s 18 Manitoba Indigenous Youth Achievement Awards recipients. The awards were presented on Nov. 22. Davis, a student in KEC’s interactive digital media program, is one of two winners of a James Gorlick Grant for Women in Computology.

“It’s fun,” Davis, 17, said about KEC’s program. “My plan is to get into Red River, and get into digital design media, which is more about making art and 3D models, and I’ll try to get into the game programming.”

Founded in 1994 to combat negative images of Indigenous youth and to celebrate their achievements, the MIYAAs are awarded annually to outstanding Indigenous youth between the ages of 16 and 24 excelling in a variety of cultural and academic categories. Recipients are chosen by a committee of Indigenous peers. While they didn’t expect to win, Davis, who is Anishinaabe, was happy to be recognized.

“I didn’t think I’d actually win,” Davis, who is a member of Ebb and Flow First Nation, admitted. “But I did. My teacher nominated me. I didn’t think I had done enough to actually win the award, but I did get picked. It validates my work. I felt I was terrible at coding, but this award kind of showed me that actually, I’m not.”

Davis added they were nervous to get up in front of the crowd to accept the award at the Victoria Inn on Nov. 22. “I was nervous to get it, because I’ve never talked in public before. But I think I did OK.”

Currently, Davis and other KEC IDM students are working on developing a table top card game, after completing an arcade-style computer game. “I made something similar to the Dinosaur game you find on the internet, but I added some new mechanics,” Davis said. “It was fun.” “ It validates my work.

SHELDON BIRNIE - STAFF REPORTER EAST KILDONAN