During this week’s session, we worked as a team for the first time: we did a Regent Park walking tour with the Diva girls, named our team, and started exploring the direction of our future project.
After the ice-breaking game with all classmates and Diva Girls, we had around 40 minutes to tour around the area. The time is unexpectedly short because our Diva girl, Huddinie has endless personal stories to tell about every single spot we passed by. The tour started from the basket field. While the surrounding residential buildings have changed over-time, this space, and an Anglican Church right next to it remain unchanged over time. Huddinie also mentioned her home was right across the street, where the townhouses located in the picture. The basketball field, though poorly maintained, is the centre of Regent Park youth for her.
Then it was Parliament Street, where restaurants and convenience stores gather and where people in the area hang out. The Diva Girls know every store: who runs it, how long it has been there, who visit certain stores… We were impressed when she explained how each convenience stores differ from each other with the source of goods and customers. A Mosque called Masjid Omar Bin Al-Khattab sits right next to the stores. Compared to the three churches in the same area, this Mosque is rather difficult to notice with its tiny dome. According to Huddinie, before the Mosque was renovated, it was at the underground of a restaurant, and the space was extremely small, especially for girls. Furthermore, she mentioned the two Mosques in the area serve Islams with different ethics.
The Basketball Field
Parliament Street and the Mosque
It was funny that we spent way too much time on Parliament Street so that we had to rush to Regent Park and only can have a sneak peek of the park itself. On the southern side of Regent Park are the new condos and Daniel Spectrum. And on the other side, there are the last few old buildings waiting to be demolished in the short future.
Our heads were full of stories and personal anecdotes on our way back to the classroom. None of us had good suggestions on the team name until we saw the traffic signage before we go back to the classroom. Besides the funny turtle figure, we found the idea of ‘calmed community’ resonates with our idea about using media tools as a means of documentation and reflection. Because we have a focus of faith and built environment, it’s really cool that our team name actually comes from the built environment of the neighborhood. The turtle is also an analogy of us slowly getting out of the shell and gradually get to see the surroundings.
The Turtle
Doing Turtle Gestures for Fun
Through our project, we want to record the built spaces in Regent Park, some of them are under rapid transitions and looks totally different 5 years ago, and some of them stay for decades. Also, we want to discover how built spaces are able to embrace residents’ faith, for example, how Masjid Omar Bin Al-Khattab managed to grow from underground to have its own building.
The tour with Diva Girls was amazing, we get to know their personal stories, feel their love and knowledge towards the neighborhood and local residents. We are now much more familiar with the area and ready to dive deeper through the project.
The Regent Turtle team members are Huda, Kamila, Xinyi, and Rushay.