The group meeting that we had ended up being a success for us as it helped to create a working outline for our media project. Initially when we gathered, we did not really have a strong preference as to which direction we wanted to take. We now know that we want to focus on the stigmatization of Regent Park, but the debate remained on whether we should only showcase these negativities, or if we are able to step up more by using our media project to combat these wrong perceptions. With Aditi’s help, we were able to come up with a solid plan to focus on the latter and we will use our media project as a tool to combat the stigmas. Our next step was trying to narrow down our project format. From the start, we knew that we wanted to do photography. At this point, we plan to complement these photographs with short videos that we could take around the area. Our Diva Girls, Sumeya and Fraza, also suggested creating a time-lapse video while riding the bus, because it shows the transition of the revitalization as we pass through buildings along the street. We hope that we are able to achieve these goals without any adjustments, but we are also open to adding writings with our photographs as an alternative should the videos not work out the way we had hoped.
More specifically, in combatting the stigmas of the neighbourhood, we decided that we will focus on how mainstream media has depicted Regent Park. Our way of doing this will be by finding news articles that embody negative connotations towards Regent Park and our photographs will act as a response by revealing the reality of life in the neighbourhood. We hope that through the photographs, people can find more positive thoughts about Regent Park and recognize that the stigmas one may hold in their mind do not reflect the lived experiences of neighbourhood residents. This will highlight that what is stated in the media can sometimes be misleading. To reach this objective, we came up with a weekly schedule that has goals we have to achieve by the end of the week. For this week in particular, we hope to be able to gather most of the news articles we need. So that in the next session, we can discuss what places, people and things we can photograph to support our revelation. Sumeya and Fazra have an important role in being our neighbourhood guides to make this happen. In addition, the rest of the meetings after that will be for the creation of our photos and videos. In these weeks we will be putting a focus on video and photo editing together with creating the write-up. We also set aside time to start thinking about the best way to display our media project later on during the showcase.
We have done some initial research thus far. In particular, Fazra showed us an article by The Star that the Diva Girls disliked because of the way it was written. Shayla pointed out how the article described Regent Park’s redevelopment as bringing “awesome amenities”, but in reality, we know that most of the residents, such as our Diva Girls, do not get priorities to these services. Michelle found an article published in the Toronto Sun that gives an overly positive remark about the need to push revitalization further to fix problems, such as gang violence. We have learned in class that the Diva Girls do not support the revitalization, and crimes still happen even as new buildings are coming to the neighbourhood. These are the initial results, and we will continue to refine it as we go along with the project. Below is a short time-lapse of us creating our project timeline and refining our topic!
Shayla, Michelle, Sumeya, and Fazra are The Legacy Leavers.