Update on interviews
This week, we conducted interviews with the owner of Gushi Japanese Street Food, Shinji Yamaguchi and the owner of Ticana African Store (who prefers to not disclose her personal information). The two interviews are a great addition to our project by both confirming some of our previous findings and offering new perspectives.
Shinji was the first non-Regent Park resident we encountered in this project. Interestingly, due to the geographic location of the store (see Fig. 3), the owner seems to align more with the Cabbagetown community rather than with Regent Park. Shinji mentioned that he is a part of the Cabbagetown BIA, but he has also accepted interviews from Focus Media in the past to talk about his experience owning a business near the neighborhood. During the interview, Shinji expressed his positive outlook for the future of Regent Park and Cabbagetown. He also mentioned that he is aware of the possibility of gentrification from the new developments, but he sees more benefits than harm from this process.
We encountered some challenges when we’re interviewing for Ticana. The owner of the store was not fluent in English so she asked her sister who also works in the store to do the interview. Although we explained this is only for a school project and we hope to promote their businesses, she was not willing to show her face on camera and prefers to not disclose her personal information. As a result, for this video, we will substitute footage of her speaking with footage of the store and of our group members. Despite her unwillingness to do the interview at first, she provided us with a lot of information as the conversation went on.
Fig. 1 Interview with Ticana African Store
Fig. 2 Interview with Shinji from Gushi
Fig. 3 Gushi locates outside of the North boundary of Regent Park (Gerrard St E)
Research question
Synthesizing our findings from interviews and course readings, we decided to formulate our project around two research questions:
RQ1: What role do local food businesses play in the evolving social and physical landscape of Regent Park amidst new developments?
RQ2: How do local food businesses adapt and position themselves within the changing social and physical landscape of Regent Park due to these developments?
The first question investigates the impact of local food businesses on the neighborhood's transformation, while the second explores how these businesses strategically respond to the changes. We hope to approach our project with a more open-minded perspective and hope to uncover the complexities of the neighborhood and the redevelopment project.
Presentation format
The main format of our presentation will be an interactive map set up on a website where visitors can explore the local food businesses in Regent Park as well as access the videos we produced. The website will serve as both a directory of the food businesses in the neighborhood as well as an archive of the videos we produced. We plan on placing a laptop and a monitor on the presentation table. The visitors will be able to interact with the materials on the website using the laptop. On the monitor, there will be a short trailer video (1-2 minutes) playing in loop to give visitors some context. The video will consist of behind the scene footage we took throughout the course with narration from our group members.
Next week
We have scheduled two more interviews next Thursday with Ethiopian Spice and Grocery Store and East Coast Donair.
Before next Thursday, we will build a prototype of the interactive map website and finish editing at least one of the interview videos to receive feedback.
The Off the Shelf team members are Tyrone, Wilma, Chanel, and Annette