Diva Girls' Blog Post - February 11th (UofT Collaboration)

Regent Park Focus is partnering with the Youth, Arts, and Engagement Program at the University of Toronto to produce a media product that is based on the community. This is the third session. 

This session was focused on creating groups. The students from UofT were put into groups beforehand by their professor, Aditi, and given topics. After having the option of switching topics and groups they were given the job of trying to get the young women from focus interested enough in their topic to join their group.

After the girls were put into their groups they were greeted by Alexa Mills, an editor from the Washington City Paper who talked to them about journalism and how multiple individuals can tell the same story differently. She read through a few articles and then lead an interviewing activity.

For this activity the groups were to pick one interviewee, the other members were the interviewers. They were to create two questions for the interviewee and think of how they would write a biography, they would present the first sentence to everyone. The interviewee would write the first sentence of their autobiography, the best sentence would be picked by the audience.

Many were surprised to see how the sessions were quite different from each other although they all still held the same meaning.

Alexa talked about how wording can help bring someone in or turn them away from an article and that having a hook and grabbing the readers attention can do help keep them reading until the end. The group left with a stronger understanding of getting messages across.

Amna Quaid Azam