NSCAD alumna captures the nostalgia of the 90s with Instagram

NSCAD alumna Michelle Irving (BFA 1999) enjoys creating post-sound for film and television; including shows like Blackberry, I Like Movies, and Workin’ Moms. It took her a long time to find a professional post-production career, having worked in places like Emily Carr University and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and OCAD University and McMaster University when she made the move to Toronto.

She studied at NSCAD University from 1995 to 1999, in a post-New Seattle Halifax that had begun to supplement guitars with all-night raves. Inspired by @artschool90s account on Instagram, she created @nscad90s on Valentine’s Day 2022.

“The first week I lost sleep because I was in a time machine, lying awake at night having all these memories and all the permutations one goes through in the four years of university,” she says.

What was NSCAD like in the 90s?

When I was there, there was recognition that the heyday of NSCAD was in decline.

Alice Mansell was the president at the time, and both faculty and students were not happy with the direction she was taking things. It was going in a neoliberal approach, trying to homogenize our program to match what was happening everywhere else. There were in-house protests against her, and she was not liked by anyone; I wouldn’t have wanted her job.

Despite that, I felt like it was a really wonderful time. We still had the interdisciplinary options, and the overall scene in the city was cool. There were bands, the whole electronic rave thing was going on, and hip hop was huge. What was great about Halifax is all those scenes intermingled in an interesting way.

I’ve worked at other places like OCAD and Emily Carr, and what I realized over the years is how unique the educational experience was in Halifax at that time because it was a really intimate setting. You went out for drinks with your professors; I housesat and dog sat for them. It’s just not something you see elsewhere. I remember there was a house fire where students lived on Gottingen Street, and I heard some of the professors walked up the hill with their credit cards and wanted to help. That wouldn’t happen anywhere else.

How did you start the @nscad90s Instagram page?

I’d seen the @90sartschool Instagram; I kept looking at it and wanting to see my experience, but I think it’s pretty exclusively American.

I offhandedly posted on Facebook, ‘Somebody should do a NSCAD 90s page’ and a couple people were like, ‘Yeah that would be great!’ So, I thought, OK, I guess I should do it. I’ve moved a lot so I don’t have as many images as I would have liked, so I reached out to some people for photos. The first person to send me stuff was Goody B. Wiseman, then Lucy Pullen and Emily Vey Duke.

Nobody has sent me actual pictures. They’re—for the most part—taking pictures of pictures. Maybe some people have scanned stuff, but most people take a picture with their phone. When people submit photos, often they don’t label them, so I don’t remember the names of everybody I see. I’m not into making it a ton of work for myself, so I put up the photo with a question mark and wait for people to chime in.

I really enjoy the way people have interacted with it. I haven’t had any negative interactions; I’ve had a couple people ask me to remove an image and I respect that. That’s part of the rationale for not tagging full names, just the first name—maybe not everybody wants to be hyperlinked. That said, sometimes in comments people will put the full names. I just leave them, that’s community moderation.

What has been your most memorable post?

I haven’t got any statistical analysis but every once in a while there’ll be a strong response to a photo of a person. One of the photos that hit big was the pigeonhole mailboxes. When I was sent that photo I was like, “oh my gosh, I had forgotten about that!” It was a magical thing.

You would get all manner of things in it— sometimes little presents every week. People did art projects with those boxes. That was definitely a key one. There are some buildings that resonate with people, like the Lodge and the Khyber. Bishop Street was also really popular, which was a row of apartments where a lot of students lived across from the old farmers’ market.

What is the future of the @nscad90s?

I have no intentions of ending it right now. There’s no point in taking it down, it’s an online archive at this point. There are people I know aren’t represented on the page, and I hope that more of those names and faces find a sense of community on the account.

For a blast to the past, follow @nscad90s account on Instagram and share your NSCAD 90s memories with Michelle.