Regent Park Focus

On Tuesday, August 25, Catcha Da Flava was co-hosted by Maeashah, Sarah, Tyrone, and Judd. To start off the show, Maeashah and Sarah covered a story out of Taiwan where a 12 year old boy had tripped while visiting a museum, and fallen into a 1.5 million dollar painting. The girls discussed other famous cases of people damaging expensive art work, and what happens when you break something that costs millions of dollars! The topic then turned to the CNE, and the great events and crazy foods that are being showcased this year. The theme this year seems to be deep fried- popular items include chicken waffle on a stick, tidbits piton, frosted flake battered chicken, poutine balls, and bacon wrapped grilled cheese. That made an interesting segue to the next item up for discussion- health and wellness! Tyrone joined in for a conversation on new research that claims people do not need to drink 8 glasses of water a day. The panel found this a little hard to believe, since they and the rest of ...

When we don’t have any workshops running so we continue working on our independent work. All of us are doing different things. One group had a radio interview scheduled this morning which went very well. The rest of us where editing more episodes and as soon as you were done a new project we would be assigned a new one. This way we all stay productive and get the episodes and radio shows done on time. One of the groups was working on a script for a mock trial to teach youth about the Landlord and Tennant issues. By the end of the day we gathered together a crew and filmed the whole mock trial. Even though we had to stay longer we all stayed supportive and helped each other out to feel comfortable on set and behind the cameras so everything is done smoothly and quick. Instead of using the studio we filmed in the big common area. It was a fun new experience because we had different backgrounds to work with and a lot more angles we could fill from. Since the lighting workshop we all are...

Today we focused mainly on just getting a lot of work done, which was great!! Kerry had scheduled for us to have someone from CBC come in to talk to all of us but because of an emergency, they weren’t able to come in today. So, instead we just continued editing our unfinished projects. I got a lot done on the Family Fuze project with Adonis which should be 100% finished within the next couple days. Everyone else was working on their various projects. Stephanie was continuing her episode of French TV. By: Pierce Holmes

Today was definitely a very productive and busy day. Around 1:30PM the Pablito Greco from Life X came in again! We continued our lighting work shop but this time we got in depth. He started the workshop by giving us a review of what we learned the previous session and then told us what we’d be doing today which is getting hands on with our lighting technique. After he finished his short lecture, we all entered the studio. He told us what we have to do to improve our lighting in our productions by showing us the effectiveness of Key, Fill and Back lighting. Also told us that we should always turn of the room lights when shooting, and only focus primarily on our Key, Fill and Back lights. Was very informative and I hope will have some effect on our productions from now on. Our day didn’t end there though! Afterwards, Me, Stephanie, and Maeashah had to go out to do our radio show at the farmers market. For the sake of attraction, we also brought with us the Mammal bike. Our show top...

The morning started with all of us editing. I have come very close to finalizing the family fuze episode! Once the afternoon started, we were told that we are going to have someone come in to do a workshop on lighting! His name was Pablito Greco. I immediately recognized him from one of our shows, Life X. Which I actually edited! He has a very engaging and enthusiastic vibe which made it much easier to stay engaged and interested rather than staring off into space. The thing I liked about him the most is that he gets everyone involved. He taught us a variety of things about the types of lighting, what certain types of lighting are used for, and a whole lot of other interesting stuff. By: Pierce Holmes

Shellana, Sarah, Emmanual, Tyrone, and Judd co-hosted Catch Da Flava on August 18th. To start off, Shellana filled everyone in on the ‘Tim Mortons’ that was found in South Korea. Apparently, Canadians living in South Korea were excited at what they thought was the opening of their beloved Canadian coffee house, but to their disappointment it turned out to only be a knock off. The panel decided they would not be interested in trying Tim Mortons coffee. Next, the discussion turned to youtube prankster Coby Persin, whose latest ‘child luring’ prank has gone viral. In the prank, Coby convinced three sets of parents to let him pose as a 15 year old boy on social media, and contact their teenage daughters to see if they would agree to meet him. All three girls fell for his prank, and he lured them into different scenarios where their very angry parents were waiting for them. The hosts discussed this case, and other pranks that have gone too far, and if it’s time for some restrictions on wh...

Today, we had a researcher who specialized in temp work, Ellen MacEachon come in because we had to get a show done with her since it follows our August theme of workers rights. When she came in, we had to start getting ready to shoot the show, so we all sat down and had her tell us what she does and the ethics of temp work. I have to say, I learned a lot during that conversation. Afterwards, we began shooting the show when came out to be a great success without any errors. Very informative day! By: Pierce Holmes

The editors stuck to their work and the majority of us have edited very successful shows and in a quick time period. I personally am editing 4 shows at the moment it’s a lot of work but very rewarding when you finish and can show it to people. We had a lot of new participants starting to learn how to edit and they caught on very quick. Another group was brainstorming for a new radio show topic and contacting people to bring on as guests. The third group had a script already prepared to portray social justice issues. They brainstormed on who should play what character and added in some additional information to make sure the idea will clearly come across to the audience and easy to understand. As well as deciding the props they were going to use to make the situation as realistic as possible. Overall we were a hard working team this week.

This week the focus really was on completing your independent work or group radio shows. It was a very focused day where the editors continued to get their work done. With the radio groups everyone was adding their last few touches to their projects. They also researched more about their next topic they are to be doing which is a live radio show. So the main focus of today was to just get a better understanding and practice creating storyboards and scripts for our videos and radio shows.

We all have our own assigned projects now so today we mostly did independent work. Some of us are working on editing projects while others are working on their radio shows. We all worked for the most day getting what we needed done. By the end of the day one group did a radio show. We set it up so that all the rest of the participants could watch them and listen to their topic on the thought of Toronto hosting the 2024 Olympic games and what it means to be a Canadian. Afterwards we all helped give them feedback to improve their show.

This week our main focus is getting up to speed with all of our editing projects. All the other participants that are not editing are working on their radio show topics. Either editing their audio or researching more about their topic to add to their show. We have a guy that comes in every so often, his name is Andrew he’s the director of the music program. He started to teach us more about Garage Band, and how to create our own music. We learnt how to add different instruments that already have a certain rhythm and also how to create our own rhythm with certain instruments. The goal in the end is to create our own piece of music for our radio show to make it more fun and exciting.

Last week we had Linda from the Toronto Workers’ Health & Safety Legal Clinic come in, so today she came in again with a few more guests. We filmed two episodes about their organization and the rights youth have to refusing unsafe work. We did a quick recap listening to them and writing down notes for the show. We were all assigned our individual roles in the studio so as they were talking we would think about how the TV show should be produced.   It was my first time hosting today, it’s a nerve-racking experience if you haven’t been on camera a lot. What is so great about FOCUS is that we all help each other out. We all have our own jobs but we are there to guide each other.

On August 9th, Regent Park Focus broadcasted live at Sunday in the Park, Regent Park’s annual community festival. The youth summer media group prepared two radio shows and some live music for the day. Maeashah and Aidan rode the mobile media lab from Focus over to Regent Park, attracting quite a bit of attention along the way. Once they arrived at the park, the group started their first radio show, a live interview with Beixi Liu from the Workers’ Action Centre, which was hosted by Sadie and Sarah. Beixi answered questions about workers’ rights, youth rights at work, and told the crowd all about Ontario’s fight for $15 and fairness, which is a campaign to raise the minimum wage in Ontario to $15. The next show was about Canada’s upcoming election, and how to get Canada’s youth more involved, hosted by Vina and Sarah. The first guest was Toronto Centre NDP candidate Linda McQuaig. Linda answered Vina and Sarah’s questions and gave her perspective on how to get youth more involved...

We all brainstormed today as a team about different topics we should talk about at the radio show at “Sunday in the park.” We came up with the topics: Workers Action Centre, what it means to be Canadian, the elections coming up etc. We all got to work and started researching a lot about our independent topics so we are prepared for Sunday. We also discussed how we are going to be doing a live radio show in the park. We planned how we should introduce the show and how we should sit so the audience can watch and stay engaged. It was a very helpful and productive day overall getting all the work done and making sure we are all on the same page.

Beixi Liu from the Workers Action Centre came to talk to us about Youth Rights at Work and the Employment Standards Act (ESA). He talked to us about the rights we have as an employer and when we can refuse unsafe work. It was also interesting to hear about when we can/ can’t get paid for vacation. It was also interesting to find out that Ontario has no sick days. Beixi thought that it was unfair too because when your sick you have no control, either you stay home and lose pay or you go to work and contaminate everyone. By the end of the workshop he talked to us about Fight For $15 and Fairness. This campaign wants to bring up the minimum wage to $15 so it raises us right above the poverty line. It was a very informative workshop we were all engaged and asking a lot of questions. It is a great workshop to have for youth because it reminds us and teaches us about our rights, which usually go ignored. - Sadie

Today we had Linda Vannucci a lawyer / director of the Toronto Workers’ Health & Safety Legal Clinic come talk to us about workers safety. She told us about some of the cases she had to work with and the bad situations that we could find ourselves in. She described to us the rights we have to refusing unsafe work and the options we have to contacting people other than your employer. It was a very informative workshop. Most of us may have learnt some of this information in school but now that we are all in a workplace environment it was helpful to remind us of our rights that we have, and that we need to be cautious of our surroundings while still getting the job done. - Sadie

July 20th Today renowned chiropractor, Scott Levine came back to film a small series of TV shows on how to stay healthy and what we should do to stay healthy. July 21st Today, the youth planned for their radio shows and we discussed their topics further. They set up interviews with guests and continued to plan out the rest of their radio shows. July 22nd Today, the youth got to experience what it’s like to to be in the Landlord and Tenant board. The youth witnessed many different trials and expanded their knowledge of how to advocate for themselves and how being prepared is very important. July 23rd The youth planned for radio and continued to broaden their understanding of the subjects. They continued to find guests. Some of the youth edited their radio PSA’s while others worked on other projects such as editing past TV shows. July 24th Today, OJEN came back in to talk to the youth about tenant issues. They also took part in a mock trial where...