Focus Media Arts Centre Blogs

Regent Park Focus, since 2013, has joined forces with HiveToronto Hive Toronto which is a network of non-for profit organizations within the Toronto area. HiveToronto is supported by Mozilla (The developers of Firefox) and acts as a way to bring organizations together to collaborate and participate in Maker Party events. A Maker Party is an event led by any of the containing organizations within the Hive network. A place to give participants the opportunity to quite simply... make something. For Regent Park Focus we have been very lucky to be featured in the 2014 MozFest that took place in London, England last week. All the Hive networks from around the world met up for the very first time. Was a great opportunity to connect, share knowledge, collaborate ideas and discuss challenges and solutions pertaining to each organizations' needs and potential growth. Additionally to the Hive track program I was fortunate enough to also meet the other track programs that Mozilla support...

My grade eleven year was largely highlighted by my experience in the TDSB and Facing History and Ourselves “Genocide and Crimes Against Humanities”course. Through it my class and I were able to explore topics that sometimes rendered us speechless and often produced new inspiration in our minds. Everyday in class we would learn about atrocious events of the past or present, at home or abroad. We would try to step into the shoes of the victims and the perpetrators, and understand the atmosphere around such events. However, throughout the course we always knew that what we were studying was too far removed from our lives for us to be helpful. If they were current issues, we struggled to find a way that we, Torontonian high school students, could tackle such issues. It was often very distressing to delve into difficult questions when none of us could really provide an answer. When Facing History & Ourselves and Regent Park Focus teamed up for the “Radiozilla” project, it seemed th...

Regent Park Focus recently completed a collaborative project with RadioZilla along with Facing History and students from the Toronto District School Board to create insightful, intelligent and meaningful radio documentaries. Facing History and Ourselves' mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds to examine the contemporary perspective of youth on race, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote the development of a more informed and humane society. They use the power that teachers have in the classroom to connect young people to Canada's multicultural identity and how to be an active citizen in a democracy. The student groups examined a wide range of topics in their radio documentaries including: religion, upstanders vs. bystanders and life as a refugee. Religious freedom and expression can be a contentious subject within school environments and is often an issue that youth face as they mature and develop into young adulthood. The group from Radiozilla d...

Today the youth pretty much did more editing on their radio interviews, which flowed into the afternoon. Later in the day the youth split into the regular groups, some of which recorded their radio shows in the two recording studios. It was a busy day, mainly comprised of audio editing. By: Tresvonne Rose-Wilson

Tonight the students from Radiozilla came in to learn how to properly conduct interviews using handheld recorders and mics, how far you should be from your interviewee and how you should go about asking your questions to get quality answers. As part of the interview training the students conducted mock interviews using the remote recording equipment provided by Regent Park Focus.This process is to gear them up for when they are ready to interview people on the streets of Toronto for their audio documentaries. They did an awesome job! Funding for this project was provided by the Ontario Trillium Foundation and Mozilla Hive Toronto.

Inspired by HiveNYC's Radio Rookies, Regent Park Focus and Facing History are collaborating to produce youth-led internet radio series, school curriculum guide, audiovisual slideshows using web-maker tools, and a project documentary. Working with 5 different TDSB high schools the project will be contributed by 20 students in the first phase. Today marks the first day of the RadioZilla Project.We spent most of the day doing introductions and tours of the Regent Park Focus space, TV studio and radio studios. We also presented some examples of radio documentaries produced by HiveNYC's Radio Rookies to give them a better idea of the project and how to incorporate visual theme with their audio. Funding for this project was provided by the Ontario Trillium Foundation and Mozilla Hive Toronto.