Focus Media Arts Centre Blogs

Little Divas Girls Group January 31, 2020 The Little Divas Girls Group met on Friday, January 31, 2020, for the first time this year. Four young girls attended and the meeting was facilitated by Twoey Gray, Loretta Bailey and Laura Polisuk. We all discussed several topics that were highlighted in the year 2019. We discussed Feminism during the meeting and have the girls explain what Feminism is.    We then played several games to get the momentum going and also to get the girls familiar with Laura and Loretta. The girls were asked to name some activities they would like to see happen during the weekly meetings. We all participated in the final activity which is "the masks we wear". We shared a moment when we wore a mask and when we actually took off the mask. The girls found this activity very interesting and useful because they were given the chance to speak about different occasions when they wore a mask and were able to differentiate between doing what is good and k...

This was the last sessions the Divas will be attending until fall. The session started out with a couple of games the girls played together. Some examples of the games the girls played included: charades, interview, riddles, and more.  The girls also decided they wanted to host a dance competition. We then had a pizza party and talked about their plans for the summer. Seeing these girls grow and become aware of issues and the power they have has been amazing, they are very excited for the sessions to start again in October. When they had first arrived in the program they seemed very shy and remained fairly quiet, now it's clear to see how their level of confidence has gone up and many of them mentioned that it has helped them at school. Thank you for this amazing year!

 The session on the 16th of May was used as a round table discussion to talk about the girls' opinion about the program so far. After starting with a quick game, the girls started mentioning things they liked and things they would like improved about the program. They then completed their evaluations and started talking about things they would want to learn in future sessions. On the 23rd, the girls went back to taking pictures, this time they were given even more control of how they wanted it to come out and therefore, they spent a long time situating themselves in places where the sun hit them the way they wanted it to. They also played around a lot with their surroundings finding creative ways to take pictures. The pictures are shown below: \

This session the girls worked on creating letters they would write to their future selves. This got them really thinking about their future and what they would like to do.  This somewhat stressed the girls out because they suddenly felt pressured to have their life and future figured out. After some discussion, they felt much more comfortable leaving things unplanned and many stuck to little life lessons they wanted to state. Something the girls each agreed with was that no matter what, they needed to stick together.  The purpose of this activity was for the girls to find values and characteristics of themselves that they would like to keep with them even when they got older. Many talked about positivity and bouncing back from negativity.  While writing this and brainstorming the girls also found a way to pass time by doing riddles, they seemed to know a lot and had a few laughs trying to solve them together.  The girls also mentioned taking a vid...

This session, the girls worked on photography. Since the weather was so nice we decided it would be best to go outside and get natural lighting for the pictures. The girls planned and took each picture, they worked on directing each other while also keeping lighting and the atmosphere of the picture in mind. Near the end of the session, the girls talked about how much they enjoyed taking these pictures and started planning what they would do if they were to film a video instead. One of the girls was really excited about filming videos, she offered a step by step plan about what it would be about and who she would want in it.   Some of the other planned ideas that had to do with fashion and awareness, though we may not have time to do it this year, the girls are already planning for it when programs resume in fall.

This session the girls worked on creating magazines.  They picked topics and created a cover and began writing articles for it. Some topics picked included: Anti-bullying, fashion, feminism, and more! The purpose of this project was to see how much they already knew about issues and what they wanted to continue working on and talking about.  It also helped to get a glimpse of the girls' interests. They were offered many different things to complete the project, these being pencil crayons, markers, magazines, paint, etc.  When asked why they picked what they did, many mentioned how their topic impacts them.  For example, one of the girls talked about bullying, stating that she would like to educate people on things to do if they feel like they're being bullied. One of the other girls picked the topic of Feminism, she talked about how important feminism is and why it can help many people around the world.  The girls also mentioned being able to type...

This session is the Little Divas' first session without the presence of Canvas.  Many of the girls mentioned that they would miss both the coordinators, but are still looking forward to the sessions coming up.  The girls came in and after having some snacks, began introducing themselves and went around the room showing the projects they had created and added more information on why each was important to them. They then began to not only discuss what they had previously learned but also, discussed what they wanted to learn from the future sessions.  These being activities revolving around mindfulness and breathing, meditation, podcasts and radio shows, videos, photography and much more. They also stated that they would like more in-depth information on being independent One of them also stated that they would like to have sessions where they can talk with the older divas about the program and offer advice, this idea will be explored more in the coming da...

This session the Little Divas had a showcase and the older Divas were invited to watch! While the Little Divas were getting ready the older Divas and I talked about the UofT Showcase and how they felt it turned out at the end. We then talked about the sessions leading up to it and how everyone's experience went throughout it.   Soon after, we were all invited into the room the showcase was happening at and the Little Divas talked about the work they created and we were able to listen to a song the girls had created and then watched a dance they came up with together which had the message of empowerment implemented into it. Some of the pieces the girls worked on was a wall titled "Black Girl Magic", which included letters the girls had created to people they think embody Black Girl Magic. There was also a section titled The Future which included Time Capsules the girls created. More work created was on advertising, self-portraits, Taking back Stereotypes...

On February 22nd, we started a new theme and exploration which could be aptly titled, Flawless! The next two sessions would be about recognizing different kinds of beauty, body positivity, and self-confidence! The girls all really like Beyoncé, so we decided to take a cue from her song "Flawless" to tie everything together for this theme. We started this session off as usual with an ice-breaker discussion questions for the girls. We asked them to share their favourite thing about themselves and why, and their answers were both non-physical attributes about themselves and also particular aspects of their physical appearance. I was really glad to see that the girls did not immediately think only of physical characteristics when asked this question, but also of their personalities! We also played a brief ice-breaker game called Perfect Square/Circle, where the girls had to take a string with the ends tied together, and work together in teams of two to untangle the string ...

On February 15th, just after Valentine's Day, the Little Divas came back together to continue their exploration of love and healthy relationships. We didn't expressly focus on or relate the content to Valentine's Day in particular, but the themes we were dealing with were quite timely nonetheless.  For our ice-breaker discussion question to start the day's session off, we asked the girls to share what they would do if they could become invisible, but only for the next 15 minutes. This definitely got their creativity warmed up, but it was also interesting to see the challenge of coming up with something that they could achieve in 15 minutes. After all, they were only given invisibility, not super-human speed or the ability to fly! The girls really had a good time with the electronic version of charades that we played before, so we used that as our ice-breaker game again this week. It not only allows the girls to use their close connections with each other in order to...

On February 8th, the Little Divas girls' program came back together to wrap up the previous two weeks and start on with a new theme! As always, we start our session with an ice-breaker discussion question, and then an ice-breaker game. The discussion question for the girls today was: if you could ask a wild animal one question, what animal would you pick and what question would you ask it? The girls had some very creative and interesting answers. Our ice-breaker game for the day was Heads Up, which is an electronic version of charades! We played in teams, and with Heads Up you do charades as fast as you can for your team, with the aim of the team correctly guessing as many as you can in the allotted time. You could really see the connection the girls have with each other in this game, as they seemed to have an unspoken language of understanding between them without needing to speak very much at all, which worked very well for them with charades! Before we dove into the new them...

The Little Divas wrapped up the month of January with a look at the themes of self-acceptance and body positivity. On January 25th, the session started with an ice-breaker discussion activity that asked the girls to think about what the most important thing would be to bring with them if they moved to another planet. This made them think about things that they rely on and are important to them in their lives, and also got their creative juices flowing for the rest of the session! As another fun ice-breaker activity for the day, we played a "mix & meet" game with Skittles, where each colour of Skittle was given a specific category, and the girls had to share a piece of information about themselves that related to that category for each Skittle they had of that colour. For example, if the category for blue Skittles was "family", and for red Skittles it was "hobbies", and someone had two blue Skittles and one red, they would have to share two facts about ...