Regent Park Focus

July 31- Aug 4 This week participants at Focus worked on discussing their pitches and shared their story ideas in a pitch meeting. They were asked to start on their scripts with the advice and suggestions they were given from the group meeting and to have them submitted later on. Participants also took part in a two day anti-oppression workshop with guest Rania El Mugammar, to give them context on how to write their newcomer stories. They were given several exercises and hand outs with definitions for what anti-oppression entails. They were asked to use this information to inform their script writing, but some of them will be using the information to work on their debate on race issues in Canada and America for next week’s episode of Catch Da Flava youth radio. By: Judy Pham

I interviewed rapper Emiricus Brown from Harlem, NY on this show. Emiricus is a unique artist who has his grassroots experience in poetry and is slowly trying to expand his rap interests as well. Emiricus is an amateur producer, and has only recently tried his hand at producing instrumental beats, available on his Soundcloud page. I started the interview with him asking questions about his youth and his early years dabbling in poetry and channeling his creative energy. He told the story of his youth, stating that he grew up anting to channel the hatred of the educational institution and the flawed system into is works in high school. He said that his poetry style grew as he advanced in age, and expanded from romantic poetry, to topics like politics and societal issues. Rap, he said, came naturally to him because of this. Throughout the interview, I asked him questions about his upcoming EP, his musical inspirations, and his role as a student at Emory University. I ended the show by pl...

In the second week of the Audio Production class, we touched on some basic composition and musical modes, but the practicality and interest level of the topic was lower than moving forward with mixing and focussing on sound rather than theory. In week three, we looked at more functionalities of basic recording knowledge, such as internally recording audio and sampling, and simulating space around a sound source with digital reverbs and EQ. This led us to discussion of editing audio for film and TV, and how a background in improving or manipulating sound quality for basic effects such as nearness or space is also beneficial in mixing music. Also in the third week, the students began working on audio replacement for minute-long segments of film. They were asked to find pieces of film which included foley, scoring, live sound, and dialogue. This tasked them with a holistic approach to the DAW by requiring them to work with both audio and midi, to record and to mix, to create auxilia...

The students of RPF’s 2-month audio production program initially came in once a week for 3 hours. Class began with 1 - 2 hours of discussion, instruction and demonstration before students would independently work and practice the content of the day’s lesson. Because we had 3 workstations and 6 regular students, at first we staggered the days on which some students would work on a computer, while the others were taken into another, separate lesson for the remainder of class; then in our third week we added one more day of class, so that when the students began their personal projects, they could spend more in-school hours working on them. The course content was presented under terms of self-direction and personal musical desires. The curriculum was drafted as a branching map of possible chronological creative and academic routes. When each student enrolled, they were interviewed one-on-one by the instructor on their previous experience with music and sound, what they wanted to ...

July 24-28 This week participants at Focus worked on submitting pitches for a seven-minute video they will be doing, with a focus on the newcomer experience. Three stories would be created into videos, while the rest were asked to focus on writing the script to familiarize themselves with script-writing. On Friday, participants held a goodbye party for six international student interns as their session at Focus were ​ finished. Participants were able to enjoy each others’ company, but also learn to balance that with completing all video projects on the same day. Some participants were assigned to be on air for Catch da Flava youth radio, where they discussed the experience of being international students, and the overall experience of trying to belong in a country that doesn’t wholly accept them as being a part of their society.

For this edition of Catch da Flava Youth Radio, we talked to Erdine Hope, a mental health case worker  in the Regent Park community, about mental health, addiction and her journey to being clean for 22 years. Jaidyn and I delved into the challenging and rewarding world of a mental health case worker and learned about what a mental health case worker does, the challenges they face, and how Erdine started her career as a case worker. Erdine talked about her ongoing work with youth who have mental illness and/or addictions. She gets connected with youth in need through the courts, hospitals, and on a referral basis. One intriguing challenge she talked about was the difference between  working with men and women. From her twenty years of experience, she’s found that women are, “harder to transition into case management because they are more self-reliant.” On the other hand, she's found that men usually rely on the one-on-one support that comes with case management. F...

This week on Catch Da Flava, we talked to the Under the Stars coordinator Elizabeth Mudenyo. Elizabeth spoke to the co-host Jaidyn and the host Nicholas about current events and future events that the festival will be occurring with the festival. We discussed how the festival is a Regent Park movie night where family and friends can get to together to watch family blockbuster films outside of their homes. Some of the family films are Moana, Space Jam and The Hunter For The Wilderpeople. The festival also plays foreign movies like historical documentaries, Bollywood and drama films like Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na, Bicycle Thieves and Hidden Figures. Elizabeth also spoke about the programs and workshops that will occur during the events 6 weeks of the festival opening. There will be soccer games, dance classes, dj workshops and more. These programs will run every week and take place between 7-8:30 pm before the films begins on Sunday at approximately 9pm. ...

International students show! Radio Regent and University of Toronto Summer Youth International English Program collaborated to produce an hour long live youth radio show. On July 19 th , a class of 15 international students aged 13-14 from Japan, China, Vietnam, Italy, Spain, Mexico and Brazil came on a tour of Regent Park Focus Youth Media Centre. As a part of their class activities, one of the tasks was to produce a radio show. The teenagers were very excited as none of them had ever done any broadcast before. In fact, most of them were visiting a radio station for the very first time. The students had done their homework well; all the content was fully scripted and ready- to-air. The class was divided into three groups of five students each. On the show, the students discussed issues, benefits and complicacies involving the internet and social media usage for young teenagers. They shared views on their favorite social media apps and reasons why they use them. To keep th...

July 17-21 This week participants at Focus submitted three story ideas for radio show Catch da Flava, with an emphasis on social justice topics. They had a meeting about their pitches and presented them to everyone, and scheduled in which show they will be presenting their stories. They worked on securing a guest for the topic, learning how to write a radio script, having suggestions and revisions to it, prepared to be on-air for the next week. Some of the topics included were interviewing the cartoonist and author of Asylum Squad, Sarafin. Also, some participants wanted to discuss the experience of an international student, and another participant wanted to have a debate on whether racism was worse in Canada or the U.S. Along with this, a few participants focused on completing video editing projects and working on learning how to create their own games. By: Judy Pham

For this edition of Catch da Flava Youth Radio, co-hosts Judy and Diamond held a panel discussion about the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls of Canada and the anger towards the disorganization caused by resignations of senior staff within the inquiry. Resulting in families of the victims frustrated with the lack of clear strategy and strong partnerships with Indigenous communities across the country. With the recent resignation of 5 commissioners including  Marilyn Poitras, we discussed how many have questioned the leadership of the inquiry and whether this leadership problem should result in the inquiry being represented and driven by indigenous people. Furthermore, we brought to light how families feel less willing to participate in the process as their ability to claim justice for loved ones and victims are greatly affected by these resignations. We express our thoughts on the history of social and cultural oppression of indigen...

This week on Catch Da Flava we talked to Lead Organizer of Toronto Mad Pride Tim Brown about the history of Mad Pride along with how this festival jammed packed with the art, culture and heritage of psychiatric survivors became what it is today. Tim spoke with co-hosts Judy and Diamond about events to expect during this annual event celebrating and advocating for those around the world labelled as “ mentally ill”. We discussed how mad activists and the mad community seek to reclaim language ; such as “mad”, “crazy”, “lunatic”, “maniac”, and “psycho” ;just as the LGBT community have reclaimed the word “queer”; in an effort to challenge the discrimination they faced in the past and in the present day. Tim also spoke about how Mad Pride week is held corresponding to International Mad Pride Day on July 14, and Bastille day in which during the French Revolution, citizens stormed the Bastille to liberate prisoners and  mad people. This year the Toronto Mad ...

Weekly Summary- July 10-14th This week Regent Park Focus participants and summer staff held a meeting on Tuesday to discuss what needs to be done for the next two weeks. All participants were expected to work on a game idea to be developed and created with Gaming Instructor Fernando Restituto during the summer program. Executive Director Adonis Huggins announced Judy Pham as the summer’s Media Arts Coordinator, who will directed summer participants and hold radio workshops. Video Coordinator Dimitrije Martinovic discussed all the various video editing projects, their progress, and who was assigned to them. For the week, participants have been finishing up their video projects and starting to consider gaming designs and learning coding. Some students have been assigned to work on radio shows and have been working on securing guests, figuring out relevant topics to explore, and script writing for a radio show. This Friday, Judy held a radio script writing workshop to s...

The main focus of the underground hip-hop radio show on July 10th was to only showcase underground music selections from my personal cache of underground music tracks. I started off the show introducing myself to new listeners and then proceeded to play my secreted playlist. I feel like the more personal a song becomes to a youthful audience, the more it is epitomized as a song that defines a certain generation. Therefore before each song was introduced to the audience I gave aa personal anecdote or a story about the artist pertaining to that respective song. I started off the show introducing artist Vince Staples from LA, and showcased the song titled “SAMO” from his most recently released album “Big Fish Theory.” Throughout the show I played tracks by Jhene Aiko, Waldo, Smino, the WDNG CRSHRS, and finally finished the set off by playing “All Star” by Cousin Stizz.

The main focus of the underground hip-hop radio show on July 6th was to interview a rap artist from Atlanta, GA and ask him about his journey as a rapper in the youth community. I began the show by introducing myself and my guest artist BOREGARD to the radio audience and then promptly commenced the interview. In the interview I made sure to ask about his artistic vision and it developed and evolved since he was very little—music, he said, was a huge part of his life growing and allowed his youth to be more creatively fruitful. He answered questions about being a business student apart of an elite American institution, and how being an artist and a student helped him visualize his artistic dreams in a very efficient economic way. Listen Here: http://regentparkfocus.com//radio/media/undergroundvybes/Underground_Vybes_2017-07-06.mp3