Regent Park Focus

Like all of our previous Last Fridays' events, Friday February 26th held in honor of Black History Month, was spectacular. The event was held at the Daniel's Presentation Centre. We had some new and some familiar faces in the crowd which made a great audience. This month we filled our tummies with Jerk chicken and rice and more performers than usual. The evening started with the Regent Park House Band da Youngstas. They were followed by Da Newz poetry of Kim Miller and traditional African drumming by three members of Matadi, a Toronto based drumming collective. Toronto artist's Ekko Effect livened up the crowd with some energy filled rapping. He was followed by rap artist Kris P. The first half of the evening was brought to a close by the soulful R&B singing of Toronto artist Steve J'lin, In the second half of the evening, Raswell and Ekow of the band Subnodes, reignited the crowd with their unique brand of progressive hiphop. The multi-talented duo's perform...

This is Saeema, Abdul and Abdi from RPTV. Today we completed one script out of five for our 5-part video. With the help of our mighty leader Adonis, along with his dramatic and effective role-playing, we were able to combine our efforts, allowing us to come one step closer to finalizing our script. We personally think that that everyone’s participation as a whole gave us very positive results. The first thing we did was getting into the minds of our characters. We did this so that we could all come up with dialogue that was in-character and appropriate. Secondly, we came up with lines, along with actions for our script. This was a simple task now that we had all gotten into character! Lastly, we got someone to type everything up so that our precious ideas were not lost. Keep checking our blog to see our progress.

Regent Park Focus Photography Studio's very own William Kuan was one of ten finalist in the “Our City, Our Stories” photography contest. The contest was aimed at building youth skills in the digital arts, visual storytelling, self expression, engagement and leadership in their communities. Program sessions took place in five different communities across Toronto including Jane & Finch, Scarborough, Rexdale, Etobicoke and our very own Regent Park. The 10-week fall program at Regent Park took place after-school every Wednesday at the Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre. William used his friend Tresvonne Rose-Wilson as his photography subject. This is what William said about his photo project: “When I was creating this photo story, I was just trying to have fun. That’s it. Every time I took a picture of my good friend Tresvonne Rose-Wilson, I never had any thoughts. I was just being myself and he was being himself. I took photos of Tresvonne doing the things that he likes to ...

Our next radio show scheduled for February 23, 2010 will be based on the 2010 Olympic games in Vancouver. We will start with a commentary on the opening ceremony of the Olympic games when athletes, Steve Nash, Wayne Gretzky lit up the cauldron to start the games. Our main topic for the radio show will be on Canada's aspiration to get a gold medal in both the men's and women's hockey. Abdi, a new member of our radio collective, will talk about the women side of Olympic hockey. While Ruhul (me) will talk about the men side of Olympic hockey and the rivalry Canada and Russia. We both think that it will be a great show. Members of the radio show: Ruhul Miah and Abdi Adow Listen Now!

Hello, my name is Waqar. I'm a participant in the RPTV video program at Regent Park Focus. We are still editing our video on meaningful youth employment, a project that we began as part of the fall session. See our previous blogs on RPTV if you want more information. As part of the winter session, in early January we began working on a "youth resilency" project with the city. This project involved interviewing sixteen youth from four different areas of the city about the factors that lead to resilient youth. Seema and Emmanuel did most of the editing for the video. The video was shown at a conference on resilency held on January 25 at Metro Hall. During this week's session of RPTV, we continued brainstorming story ideas for our next video. Our next video will be a series of five different stories of people living in an apartment complex in Regent Park. So far we have about 4 stories. So this week we all participated in a role playing game to help us come up with dial...

The February 16, 2010 Catch da Flava radio show was hosted by Shamina, Rima and Lupa. Our featured guest was Farrah from Aqsazine. She talked about the Aqsazine and issues around Muslim identity particularly for young girls. We also talked about Muslims in the media and and how youth can use zines as a voice/form of social action.

Amer, bipu and I(Ishtique) was on the radio show on feb 9th, 2010. We started the show with two youth guests from Toronto Community Housing, Tarak and Yousuf. They talked about the youth tenant elections scheduled for April 8, 2010. Our main topic was on the concept of prank calls. We discussed issues like why youth decides to make prank calls and weather they know their limit or not. We also talked about the impact it has on strangers and friends. We talked about our personal experiences dealing with prank calls and making them. The last 6 minutes of the show was devoted towards the Olympics and how pumped up people are. and our two guests Tarak and Yusuf talked about the youth elections in regent park. Listen Now!

On Tuesday, February 2, Glen Murray, the Liberal Candidate in the February 4 provincial by-election in the riding of Toronto Centre-Rosedale (which includes Regent Park) paid a visit to Regent Park Focus and was interviewed live by Catch da Flava Radio correspondents Bipu, Amer, and Ishtiaque. Mr. Murray is no stranger to the political scene, having served as mayor of Winnipeg for many years. A number of issues of particular importance to residents of the Park were discussed including the ongoing revitalization of Regent Park. He expressed a strong commitment to improving the affordable housing situation in the area. He also stressed the importance of arts and culture as a means of building strong communities and pointed to specific measures that are taking into account the ethnic diversity in Regent Park. Murray also discussed his belief that public input will play a large part in the political decision making process if he is elected. The interview aired later that evening on ...