Regent Park Focus

On august 17th, 3 guest students attending the Co-op program with George Brown, Sophi, Niki and Peter along with one high school student Fatima and the host One2Tres, all put together a radio show on Teen Mental health issues. Each of the youth were assigned to a different topics having to do with teen mental health such as: What can lead to mental health issues, Ways so deal with mental health issues, Symptoms of mental health issues, etc. The youth actually had a meeting with a worker from CAMH that specialized in mental illness and had to do a lot research to put this show together because they were not even aware ( and most youth probably aren't ) about teen mental health issues or how common it is. - Tresvonne Listen Now!

So far, all's well with the Dixon Hall girls that meet up at Focus for the Thursday session of Arts and Crafts/Photography!  The Arts and Craft Photography workshops is a mixed media program that is offered as part of the 2010 Summer Media Arts Program.  Currently, some activities that we're working on is a collaborative mural/poster about the changes in the Regent Park community, both positive and negative. We were encouraged to go outside in this sweltering heat and look around and assess our living environments and the people there! We were also expressing our thoughts about the language of signs, after seeing how construction/demolition seems to have marked their presence all over the place with their "danger" and "do not enter" signs. The CNH youth have just joined the summer programs at Focus and will be attending a separate session of the Arts and Crafts Photography workshops! First session featured icebreakers, sharing, sketching portraits and...

Michelle Kay Gives Be Scenesters the Low-down on Blogging Michelle Kay, the Online News Editor for Yahoo and the new Webstories Editor for Shameless Magazine paid Be Scene’s editorial committee a visit this past Thursday. With piles of magazines in hand, and a nifty sheet of resources to check out, she led a fabulous workshop about blogging and online presence for independent magazines. Many tips were given, and good chatting went on about current stories in process for the next issue (themed: rebellion and resistance) and how they may translate into content for the blog. One of the most useful things we took away with us was the importance of keeping up with social networking platforms. In other words, that tools like Facebook groups, blogs and Twitter can and should be used with diligent regularity in order to solidify a readership base. That befriending other youth organizations and publications can create a useful online community. And that Twitter specifically shouldn’t jus...

Be Scene at the Toronto Zine Library! For magazinesters like ourselves a trip to the Toronto Zine Library was just what the doctor ordered last Sunday. It gave us a chance to do some research into the process of making a magazine that isn’t necessarily meant for large distribution, or to serve the needs of its audience, but rather as a personal project for the artist/writer themselves. Zine experts Sara and Amy gave us an overview of the history of zines, how they started as little booklets sent in the mail to and from fans of science fiction about their topic of interest, and have grown into a vibrant and subject diverse DIY (do-it-yourself) industry. Today there are zine fairs in many major cities. In Toronto, Canzine is a festival/meeting place for independent artists/writers/publishers that happens every October. Hmmm, come to think of it, this may be a great venue to distribute some of Be Scene’s mags. Learning about the history of zine making was interesting, but the mo...

Crazy Kelvin and Onik host tonight's radio show recapping the G-20. They have a guest who is a video journalist who has brought some audio pieces that show a bit more behind the scenes of the city violence that occurred and people's reactions during the time they occurred. http://www.catchdaflava.com/radio/media/2010-07-27.mp3

Summer is here! What does that mean? The 2010 Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Summer Program has launched. This year participants of the Regent Park Focus Summer program have many different programs for children and youth to join. The main theme of our work in the summer is on Life Skills Development and Youth Mental Health, which also includes other social issues effecting youth such as; peer pressure, substance abuse, racism, discrimination, the environment and so much more. Each day we offer a series of two hour workshops. The goal of each of the workshops is to create an arts project that is based on resiliency skills such as; leadership, team work, goal setting, project-task management and conflict resolution and explores issues related to youth mental health. First off, every Monday afternoons we have a group of Brown high school placement students who are doing a placement at George Brown College. These students are working on an audio play and producing their very own ra...

Luminato illuminated Toronto with arts and creativity. For years Luminato displays the celebration of theatre,dance,music,film and so much more. The best part about Luminato is that most of the events and concerts are free. This is because Luminato is designed for the people to celebrate and explore the arts. On Friday June 11, 2010, the art festival that is LUMINTO, hit the city of Toronto. The opening night was a free DIVA themed concert at Dundas Square. The crowd was packed to see 3 amazing Canadian Divas. E Talk's Traci Melchor, was the host of the night. I cheered on Traci and she thanked me backstage for supporting her. Traci Melchor is seriously amazing. She is humble and down to earth. We got the opportunity to go backstage. She chatted with the Diva writing girl's group and took a lot of pictures with us. Traci was giving the young Diva writing group advice to reach for your goals and to never give up on following your dreams. She c...

A couple of months ago, Regent Park Focus welcomed two students from City View Alternative elementary school in April. Geordie and Finlay chose to do their final video ISU project at Regent Park Focus. The young boys had 1 week to put together an amazing video presentation on a social justice issue. Time was limited so could they pull it off? On the first day staff member and video expert Emmanuel involved the boys in the entire project by teaching them about the background of Regent Park Focus and video camera techniques. This incorporated learning how to use the video camera, equipment, the various angles, positions, methods and a tour around the media studios. The boys took turns practicing what they learned and helped each other out. I also filled in as their subject when they were using the camera for a practice taping. The next day implicated jotting down ideas tossed in the air and it also involved brainstorming. Many topics were discussed such as; homelessness, racism and bull...

On Saturday June 19th I had the privilege of escorting seven passionate young journalists to a panel they moderated as part of the Luminato festival, called Pop Divas . The panel was part of the festival’s Illuminations program, and the culmination of a few months of work. A group of young women including new and seasoned members of the Catch da Flava magazine collective participated in a series of workshops held at Focus where they met and discussed the art of music journalism and pop diva specific reportage with professional music journalists, practiced researching, writing and editing articles, and developed in person interview skills. These skills were applied in the development of their articles which are being published in a special edition of Catch da Flava magazine, and in the prep work and facilitation they did for the Illuminations panel. Some of Saturday’s panellists the girls had met before in their workshop sessions. Jody Rosen, music writer and critic for slate.com and ...

What is the definition of a Diva? A lot of people have their own opinion on the characteristics of a DIVA and who they think is a DIVA in the music industry. Luminato collaborated with Regent Park Focus and created a writing workshop for the youth. In the beginning it was both boys and girls who attended the writing group. However, the girls seemed more interested in the whole DIVA topic than the boys. Therefore, it was a writing workshop for young girls. The ladies met up every Tuesday as the Luminato crew explored the music world as they incorporated writing schemes. Special guests were also part of the workshops. Jody Rosen is the music critic for Rolling Stone Magazine and the online magazine Slate. His articles on popular music have also appeared in The New York Times. Another special facilitator was Canadian writer Carl Wilson, who is the culture editor at the Globe and Mail, and the author of 'Let’s Talk About Love: A Journe...