Regent Park Focus

What is the highlight of the October shows? Let me see… All I can say is that -   “it was so awesome!” Nelly Furtado, the Grammy winner visited Regent Park at the Daniels Spectrum and opened our show for our community event called “The Jam!” which was formerly known as the Last Fridays. It was a great experience for the youth around the Regent Park community to have Nelly give them the mentorship and give all the young artists and performers inspiration to be great just like her. The catchdaflava radio crew was sworn to secrecy and was very discreet not to mention about her visit as it is supposed to be a surprise for the youth and the community. Imagine handling that capacity of the crowd traffic for Nelly Furtado at the Daniels Spectrum if they knew she was coming?!!! Anyhow, enough about Nelly, there was a lot of pumped up topics that happened this month. Amanda Todd made a huge impact when she posted videos on Youtube and Facebook after revealing her stories and then die...

On the young ladies of the diva girls program celebrated Eid with their families   and friends, because of this, more than a handful of girls were MIA. The workshop and activities planned for the day were moved to the next diva girls session in the upcoming week. L.T. Mujuzi

On Thursday October 18th, the Boys to Men group entered the second week of their fitness challenge with their trainer Angela. This week the boys competed against one another to see if they could improve on a series of exercises that they had done last week. After the fitness challenge it was time to for a fun and relaxing activities. Before the end of the boys fitness challenge, they were put on the spot when asked a couple questions about the muscles in their body that they learned last week. Even though some of them were very tricky the Boys got an A+ for paying attention to what they had learned last week. At the end of the day a few of the boys were video interviewed by staff member Emmanuel, to see how the boys felt about their second week of the fitness challenge. He asked questions such as; "What they liked/disliked about the challenge?" "Did they successfully improve on their previous amount of exercise?" "And what they learned that day?" - ...

On Thursday October 18th, the Boys to Men group entered the second week of their fitness challenge with their trainer Angela. This week the boys competed against one another to see if they could improve on a series of exercises that they had done last week. After the fitness challenge it was time to for a fun and relaxing activities. Before the end of the boys fitness challenge, they were put on the spot when asked a couple questions about the muscles in their body that they learned last week. Even though some of them were very tricky the Boys got an A+ for paying attention to what they had learned last week. At the end of the day a few of the boys were video interviewed by staff member Emmanuel, to see how the boys felt about their second week of the fitness challenge. He asked questions such as; "What they liked/disliked about the challenge?" "Did they successfully improve on their previous amount of exercise?" "And what they learned that day?" - Da...

The Diva Girls Program October 12, 2012 Stereotyping has existed in our cultures and communities for years now, this past Friday the girls learned what it is to stereotype and the impact stereotyping can have on those individuals being impacted. Therefore, after introducing a few new girls to the program with another energizing ice breaker activity, which needless to say, got the girls up and active. The girls settled down and proceeded to explore ways in which stereotyping has impacted them in their personal lives. To give you a brief insight, the girls talked about how the media portrays them as teens, how adults sometimes brush aside their concerns when voiced because they are "too young" and also how others perceive them based solely on their attire or cultural beliefs. One way that a stereotype can develop is when one individual has an opinion about a person which would then be transferred to everyone in that group, community or culture. These stereotypes ma...

September turned out to be another chaotic month for the Catch da Flava radio crew with all the community events going on around Regent Park. When I said chaotic, I meant poppin with such “ill—sickness” of events and topics to discuss! One such event is the grand opening of the Daniel’s Spectrum (The Regent Park Arts and Cultural hub) another one is the Nuit Blanche, which was held at the end of the month and you can check out our Last Friday / Nuit Blanche blog and you will see what this was all about. Our topics were consisted of a few updates from very highly amazing people of interest such as Omar Khadr’s much awaited return to Canada, Cris Brown’s talk of his breach of probation and getting tested positive for Marijuana use, and also the “Bullied Grandma the Bus monitor” receiving the donation money here in Canada! There were a few celebrity deaths such as Michael Clarke Duncan and Jerry Lawler, but a lot of death hoax also came out this month specifically “Alfonso Ribeiro” the “...

The Regent Park Multicultural Harvest Festival took place at the Daniels Spectum (585 Dundas Street East) on Saturday October 6th, 2012 between the time of 11:00am and 4pm. The event featured entertainment, food, games, prizes, seminars and a whole lot more! Even the Regent Park Focus House Band preformed along-side other talented artists from the community. We took the Mobile Media Bike Lab (also known as The Mammal) along with us for the visit of the festival; stationed along-side with residents that had set up booths to sell artwork and clothing that reflect the diverse cultures that exist within the Regent Park Community. We transformed The Mammal into a radio recording station and interviewed a few people that were involved in the festival. We'd like to thank Karen Boucher, the event volunteer coordinator for inviting us to the event.  ~ Tyrone

Diva Girls Program October 5, 2012 This past week the girls in the diva girls program continued working on their character sketch stories. We started the day off participating in ice breaker activities that allowed the girls to learn more about each other in a fun atmosphere. Along with the ice breaker activity, the girls also enjoyed playing a round of "word and colour association". The girls had to restrain themselves from helping each other as one girl after the other took turns completing the challenge. After the ice breaker activity, the girls learned that there was an added bonus to this weeks program. The group with the best story would be awarded a prize for following the guideline and inputing the most original content into their story. The girls stepped up to the challenge and genuinely impressed Pat and myself, their ability to transform a simple guideline into such imaginative tales was very impressive. R.T. Mujuzi

On Thursday October 4 th 2012, the Boys to Men’s group had a very fun and exciting day. The boy’s went to the movie theatre to watch Hotel Transylvania.   The movie is about monster’s that have their own hotel, and have the freedom to be themselves, without having to fear humans coming there. The movie takes a spin when a human stumbles into the hotel, and falls in love with one of the monsters. Throughout the movie the father tries to destroy their love because they are different. In the end he begins to accept that they are different. The moral of the story is acceptance, and at the Boys to Men group, we try our best to teach the boys to be accepting of others, even when they’re different. - Danielle A.

The Boys to Men group is a program for male youths ages 9-13 at the Regent Park Media Arts Centre, every Thursday. Last week the Boys to Men group got to visit the new Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre. The boys got to see some of the art work that would be displayed at the Nuit Blanche event that were done by some of their fellow peers. The boys really enjoyed themselves. This outing gave the boys an opportunity to see how other people and cultures perceive artwork. - Danielle A.

This month as an alternative to our Last Friday community event, we celebrated a Nuit Blanche special. This was held on Saturday on September 29th, at the Daniel’s Spectrum (Regent park Arts and Cultural Centre) 585 Dundas Street.Once again the Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre delivered an amazing show for the Regent Park community. The mission to bring the community a hyped up free Nuit Blanche musical show was a great success as the turn out was surprisingly massive and quite unexpected than usual. It made Regent Park’s mark in the map! These musical artists delivered solid performances from the opening act of our very own Focus House Band, followed by Jennifer LFO’s poprocker’s tunes, Aslam Shaheem’s Punjabi dance pop music, and the wickedest dancehall / lovers rock / ska flavour of the Memberz, the drumming geniuses,musical instructors’ Shara Claire and David Aubrey Berger, producer Murr featuring Bengali electronica singer Rosina of LAL, and lastly the adventurous band c...

This past week The Diva Girls were excited to work on the character sketch activity they had started on the previous week but due to some unforeseen circumstances this had to be put on hold. The girls in the program were invited to help out with the Nuit Blanche preparation; therefore, the days activity had to be put on hold. The girls who remained participated in activities that engage them physically and mentally. The girls seemed to enjoy themselves immensely and one girl remarked that this was the first time in The Diva Girls program that they weren't required to learn something. This of course threw me for a loop considering the fact that the activities the girls partook in were filled with learning materials. For example, one of the activities required the girls to think quickly while under pressure and respond actively. During one of these activities I had asked all the girls wearing denim to stand and that alone ensued a five minute conversation. It appeared the girls...

The young ladies in The Diva Girls program showcased their imagination, creativity and writing skills this past Friday when they were asked to write short stories. Using the same character sketch outline and with the help of the instructor the girls wrote stories with unique details. To give you a brief insight of how grand their imagination can stretch, imagine a "five foot female" with "zebra like hair" or better yet a "super smart… soothsayer" that is "beautiful during the day and ugly at night". After coming up with the character sketch and the setting of the story, the girls were then divided into small groups. Each group was given a secret identity for their character. One group whispered in excitement upon finding that there character is an alien, while another could barely contain their excitement as they dived pencil first into brainstorming a storyline for the man who turned into an evil clown at night. The creativity did n...

A very busy month for ‘The Mammal’ (the mobile medialab)… The Mammal as mentioned from some of our blogs, is a 2 rider-bicycle that looks like a boxy looking snail that carries media equipments such as speakers, radio transmitter, soundboards, microphones etc. We take this bike lab into community events and do live broadcasts and radio performances. We can show films on the bikelab as well because we can set it up as a mini stage. The Mammal is soo amazing! We took this bike lab into so many different community events the last 2 months of the summer and did our radio show and live interviews. The Sunday in the Park is one of them, Show Love, and EID, and the Last Friday events are just among the few that got The Mammal some exposure. We had a bunch of hilarity as usual for our radio shows this month. Rob Ford was busy too, with all the scrutiny surrounding him these past few months with regards to his ignorant comments to getting caught reading and driving! As if he had already l...

The Mobile Media Lab also known as "The Mammal" is a customized bike built by students at U of T architect program in partnership with Regent Park Focus. It is a radio studio on wheels that can screen videos as well as provide for various multi-media related functions. For the summer of 2012 we have committed to taking out the bike to as many different community events in Regent Park as we can. One event in particular is a weekly event called Show Love which takes place in South Regent Park. We conducted various interviews at the event to get an understanding of what Show Love is and why the residents and local community agencies decided it was important to have this weekly event for the summer, in Regent Park. In the following link you can listen to our per-produced radio show recorded from the Mobile Media Lab that evening at Show Love: Listen Now: http://www.regentparkfocus.com/radio/media/2012-08-22.mp3 ~ Tyrone

Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre continued its information gathering session on the LiveGreen project with Environmental Defence.  Since 1984, Environmental Defence has been inspiring change by connecting people with environmental issues that affect their daily lives in their homes, workplaces and neighbourhoods. On September 11 2012, Regent Park Focus youth and students from University of Toronto, and random people walking by, were there as Environmental Defence gave the cosmetic industry a "make-over". Environmental Defence brought a mural artist to paint a picture of a female face on a huge canvas, only using make-up products that men and women use everyday.  While the artist was painting this work of art, Environmental Defence volunteers grabbed passersby and asked them few questions regarding the types of make-up products they use, and if they had known the types of toxins in them? And after the passersby (most of the time U of T student...

For the final day of Summer we celebrated with a jam packed night full of music, story telling and free food at our August Last Friday event. The event took place at the Daniels Presentation Centre at 500 Dundas Street East. The event kicked off at 6:30pm with the Catch da Flava Radio crew with "The Mammal" (The Mobile Media Lab Bike), whom interviewed members of the Regent Park community about their Summer experiences, back to school and even talked about the issues with Facebook sharing information of minors under the age of 13. We will be airing the pre-produced Catch da Flava radio show that was recorded at Last Fridays on September 12th, 2012. So be sure to check that out. Some of the musical guests that delighted the crowd, were the Roots Drummers, Jessica Stuart and Trace Minerals. Thanks to Paul Corby, Kerry and Jerry for finding these great talents. ~ Tyrone

The Mobile Media Lab also known as "The Mammal" takes another trip to Regent Park's very own Show Love event. Tonight's show love event celebrated EID. You can listen to the pre-produced Catch da Flava radio show we conducted at the event, interviewing young residents and organizers in the community. Listen Now: http://www.regentparkfocus.com/radio/media/2012-08-29.mp3

Hello fellow supporters! We have officially wrapped up production of Regent Park Community News for the summer! It has been a lot of work and fun and the production crew is very happy to see things come to the end, for the summer anyways. Summer 2012 was very productive for us here at Regent Park Community News. We started the summer by reporting on the closing of Regent Park/Duke of York Public School. The school is closing and the building will be demolished. The Regent Park community came out to say farewell to their most beloved school. Former teachers, students and administrators alike all flocked into the school gym to share memories from years past. Regent Park Community News spoke to some of the current and former students and administrators for a short documentary we are working on -  the documentary is still being edited and will be online very soon! We also put the spotlight on the young women's  and young mens' programs at Regent Park F...

Maggie MacDonald from Environmental Defence Canada (EDC) conducted a workshop with a group of Regent Park Focus youth and staff. This workshop highlighted ways Canadians are exposed to toxins. The discussion focused on ten toxic offenders that are "cancer-causing, hormone-disrupting, and allergy ?inducing substances" (EDC, 2012) found in many Canadian products, but which are banned or restricted in EU products. The toxic ten list includes: Triclosan, artificial musks, parabens, phthalates, petrolatum, formaldehyde releasing agents, sodium laureth sulfate and sodium lauryl sulfate, silicone chemicals, coal tar-derived colours, BHA and BHT. In sum, these products proliferate in various home and personal care products such as shampoo, moisturizer, cosmetics, anti-bacterial cleansers, anti-perspirants, etc. It is scary to realize how much exposure individuals, especially babies and youth, encounter on a daily basis. Fortunately, knowledge is power! ...

Prior to Summer, Regent Park Focus in collaboration with "Youth Assisting Youth" have been working in various projects with youth within the Crescent Town community. Adonis, Emmanuel and Ruhul worked with one of the supervisors, Danny Fee and the youth from the Crescentown community  to develop 15 video projects based on various topics which includes promoting some the aspects of the Crescent Town Community, and drug awareness.  Some of the videos were about resources in the Crescentown community. Also theres a video about bullying and violence, which is basically about how to report a crime, and how to do it anonymously with CrimeStoppers. We also a video that featured some of the youth who were part of the video program.  Another great video was on the game of cricket, in which youth from Crescentown gave basic rules of the game. The youth had an amazing time working on the projects as they were able to develop their skills within the media arts...