Regent Park Focus

On august 17th, 3 guest students attending the Co-op program with George Brown, Sophi, Niki and Peter along with one high school student Fatima and the host One2Tres, all put together a radio show on Teen Mental health issues. Each of the youth were assigned to a different topics having to do with teen mental health such as: What can lead to mental health issues, Ways so deal with mental health issues, Symptoms of mental health issues, etc. The youth actually had a meeting with a worker from CAMH that specialized in mental illness and had to do a lot research to put this show together because they were not even aware ( and most youth probably aren't ) about teen mental health issues or how common it is. - Tresvonne Listen Now!

So far, all's well with the Dixon Hall girls that meet up at Focus for the Thursday session of Arts and Crafts/Photography!  The Arts and Craft Photography workshops is a mixed media program that is offered as part of the 2010 Summer Media Arts Program.  Currently, some activities that we're working on is a collaborative mural/poster about the changes in the Regent Park community, both positive and negative. We were encouraged to go outside in this sweltering heat and look around and assess our living environments and the people there! We were also expressing our thoughts about the language of signs, after seeing how construction/demolition seems to have marked their presence all over the place with their "danger" and "do not enter" signs. The CNH youth have just joined the summer programs at Focus and will be attending a separate session of the Arts and Crafts Photography workshops! First session featured icebreakers, sharing, sketching portraits and...

Michelle Kay Gives Be Scenesters the Low-down on Blogging Michelle Kay, the Online News Editor for Yahoo and the new Webstories Editor for Shameless Magazine paid Be Scene’s editorial committee a visit this past Thursday. With piles of magazines in hand, and a nifty sheet of resources to check out, she led a fabulous workshop about blogging and online presence for independent magazines. Many tips were given, and good chatting went on about current stories in process for the next issue (themed: rebellion and resistance) and how they may translate into content for the blog. One of the most useful things we took away with us was the importance of keeping up with social networking platforms. In other words, that tools like Facebook groups, blogs and Twitter can and should be used with diligent regularity in order to solidify a readership base. That befriending other youth organizations and publications can create a useful online community. And that Twitter specifically shouldn’t jus...

Be Scene at the Toronto Zine Library! For magazinesters like ourselves a trip to the Toronto Zine Library was just what the doctor ordered last Sunday. It gave us a chance to do some research into the process of making a magazine that isn’t necessarily meant for large distribution, or to serve the needs of its audience, but rather as a personal project for the artist/writer themselves. Zine experts Sara and Amy gave us an overview of the history of zines, how they started as little booklets sent in the mail to and from fans of science fiction about their topic of interest, and have grown into a vibrant and subject diverse DIY (do-it-yourself) industry. Today there are zine fairs in many major cities. In Toronto, Canzine is a festival/meeting place for independent artists/writers/publishers that happens every October. Hmmm, come to think of it, this may be a great venue to distribute some of Be Scene’s mags. Learning about the history of zine making was interesting, but the mo...