Focus Media Arts Centre Blogs

This week at the Regent Park Focus Divas Media Group Program, the Divas were introduced to the concept of the media representation of the body and gender as a social construct. The Divas used images from magazines and social media to challenge societal expectations about body image; emphasizing the ways in which race, religion and ability are commonly represented. This activity helped the Divas to deconstruct the social concept of “beauty” and representation of the “body”. The Divas also watched spoken word videos about body image. These videos gave the Divas a different perspective in terms of how/what they think about their bodies. This was followed by an exercise where the Divas were able to use their creative thinking to create and perform spoken word poems about what their body would say if it could speak. - Titilola Onogu 

Wed November 2, 2015 4-5:30pm Tour Regent Park Television Studios and Watch Live Taping of Shows Tour the studios, learn how a community TV station operates and how you can produce a show on Regent Park TV. 4-5:30pm Radio Regent presents Idolizing Justin Bieber & Kim Kardashian Join youth in a radio discussion exploring celebrity culture. Learn how you can produce a show on Radio Regent. Location: Regent Park Focus. 5:30-7pm Heritage Public Consultation: On Canadian Content in a Digital World Participate in a discussion for Canadian Heritage Minister, Hon. Melanie Joly about community TV and independent radio and why public access matters in the digital age. Co-facilitated by the Canadian Association of Television Stations and Users (CACTUS). Location: Regent Park Focus. This event will be streamed live. November 3, 2016 4-6pm DJ Workshop Introduction to the equipment and basic techniques of DJ-ing. Location: Regent Park Focus. 4-5:30pm Game Programming Workshop In...

Divas Media Group Blog The Regent Park Focus weekly Divas Media Group Program resumed on Friday 14th October, 2016. The Divas were back to having an exciting experience as usual. In this season of the Divas Media Program, the Regent Park Focus has a different plan for the Divas. We have lots of games, fun and exciting activities for the Divas to make their learning experience worth their while. The season started with a ‘spoken word’ series which would go on for a couple of weeks. The spoken word serious would be facilitated by two female professional spoken word artists. In the first class of the spoken word series, the Divas were excited about the art as some of most of them had never written a poem or performed the art before. The Divas were introduced to the art of spoken word, played games, got to know each other, watched videos on spoken word performances and eventually got a chance to create and perform their own spoken word. They all described their experience at the end of...

This week at the Divas Media Group Program, the Divas explored gender norms and girlhood. Through forum theatre and spoken word videos, the Divas analyzed media representations of gender and femininity. This activity helped them gain a deeper understanding of the gender binary and learn about a range of gender identities, including gender-fluid and trans-identities. At the end of this session, the Divas composed their first poetry that challenges labels and addresses the themes of girlhood and femininity. It was an exciting session for the Divas.

The first fall session of the 2016 Regent Park Focus Divas Media Group Program began on Friday 14th October, 2016. As well as games and exciting fun activities the focus of the fall Divas’s program this year will be on spoken word workshops. The spoken word workshop series will be facilitated by two female professional spoken word artists; Ayla and Londzo. In the first class of the spoken word series, the Divas played games and got to know each other. Then they were introduced to the art of spoken word. This involved watching videos on spoken word performances and eventually getting a chance to create and perform their own spoken word poetry. The Divas participants were excited about the art as some of them had never written a poem or performed the art before. They all described their experience at the end of the day as exciting.

Friday August 19 th , 2016 Today we spend the whole day catching up on projects. Mainly because there’s only 1 week left in the summer program so we’re scrambling to finish. I spent most of my day working on audio projects.   By:   Saeema Saifuddin

Thursday August 18 th , 2016 So for this Thursday, we have changed things around because unfortunately Eddie is sick and he can’t come in for a game design workshop. :( But I thought that since we’ve shot at least three scenes for Jacksons drama, I should start editing and after today, I have made tons of progress. I started by going through every single clip we have and label them. That is extremely necessary when it comes to editing, especially if its something involving so much footage (I had about 150 individual clips) because it will make your life 1,000,000 times easier when it comes to looking for the right clips. Once everything was properly labeled, I put it in premiere and began editing! And as previously stated, it’s going very well so far!  By: Pierce Holmes

Wednesday August 17 th , 2016 Today, everyone was working very hard to finish their summer projects! Multiple participants helped to film some of the shots for one of the short films, “Til my Lungs Run Out of Air". There was also another audio workshop going on, where the participants learned even more about how to audio engineer their own shows. But, for most of the day, many of the peer leaders and participants were busy editing different television shows and short films. We are all well on our way to completing our projects . By: Alicia Anglin

Monday August 15 th , 2016 When I say Mondays, you say rock. Mondays! Rock! Mondays! Rock! Who says Mondays can’t be fun and not the bane of everyone’s existence. Here at Regent Park Focus, when participants come back from the weekend they come ready to work hard. As the last two weeks of the program are approaching participants are working tirelessly to complete their radio shows, television shows, and dramas. The participants are all at different stages on their projects, some are doing research, some have gone out to film, and some have already started editing. Two projects that will be ready soon are a Toronto fashion trends show and a slang show. With all the participants workings as hard as they are we are on track to have all projects produced by the end of August! By: Nicholas Ramsubick

Thursday August 11th 2016 Back at it today with another video game workshop! This week we got into making personal 3D titles which was tons of fun. We would write our names in regular text, spend some time picking out proper fonts and then convert it into a 3 dimensional object and from there we would stylize it. But that is not where it ends; we then went into actually animating our 3D title to move around in the 3D world as we would want to. That was really cool to play around with. As well as that, I also went out to help Jackson shoot a couple scenes for his drama. We had to shoot biking scenes around a movie theatre. The way we decided to get there was to take an Uber. Once the Uber showed up, we attempted to put the bike in the back of the van but unfortunately, it couldn’t fit and as a result we couldn’t shoot where we originally wanted to. We improvised and just shot around the Regent Park neighbourhood and everything actually turned out great! By: Pi...