What’s in a Memory?

Recognition of Collective Memory  

Memories are personal preoccupations; they’re an abstract entity that cannot be taken from anyone or readily altered. They hold immense power in building community and can become a tool that brings people together across cultures and generations. Regent Park is a neighborhood distinct in its fabric because the residents share a sort of collective memory rooted in the neighborhood. This collective memory has been created through shared backgrounds and experiences, and the residents have built a strong network around this shared identity.  

However, in recent years, it’s been impossible to divorce conversations about Regent Park’s identity and the ongoing revitalization. Scholars like Brail and Lorinc (2023) have dubbed the process, “state-led gentrification” (pg. 2). In any case, the revitalization is set to alter the demographic makeup of the community (Toronto Community Housing, n.d.) which dilutes the cohesion that hinges on collective memory between long-term residents. Therefore, our group came to recognize ‘memories’ as the main element the redevelopment was encroaching upon and something Regent Park residents strived to protect.  

When did it lead to nostalgia?  

While we reflected on the power of memories shaping the Regent Park community, the main task was to translate our thoughts into a media project that engaged themes of civic engagement. With an interest in preserving memories, our conversations with Regent Park resident and teammate, Abdi, sought to delve into the archives of what Regent Park used to be. The long-term residents were accustomed to a completely different Regent, in both its physical form and community feel. It’s interesting to hear about the transformation of different buildings and street corners over time, and how the new development is melding with what has always existed. In this exchange, we found it compelling that the memories about a changing landscape resonated despite our diverse origins.  

Our conversation transitioned from discussions about new neighborhood amenities to reflections on personal memories and Abdi shared with us the differences in how he and his friends used to pass the time, as opposed to children today. We started to move forward into the examination of nostalgia, and its role in placemaking and civic engagement. Amidst the uncertainty of the future, discomfort of the present, and the fuzziness of the past, nostalgia “offers a balm” (Kirsch 2022). The goal of our project then became to deepen this exploration to unravel intricate threads that tie memories, nostalgia, and community identity of Regent Park residents together. We hoped, through this effort, that the project would honor the memories of Regent Park’s past, while becoming a tool for new residents to learn and imagine its future. 

Overview of project  

Our boardgame set-up at the final exhibition.

Our discussions led us to the idea of a boardgame centered on places gained and lost by the revitalization. There are area cards, character cards, and tool cards. The 10 area cards are informed by new and non-existent Regent Park landmarks such as Daniels Spectrum, Root & Burger, and Bigfoot Park, among others. The character cards encompass different neighbourhood demographics like seniors, youth, or adults. Finally, tool cards are like action cards, where you’re provided with prompts to use each round. In the game, players must use the tool cards at hand to imagine ways different demographics can leverage objects/events/actions to engage in the community. The game invites players to think while being in the shoes of others in the neighbourhood about their wants and needs. The game sparked people to learn about the different sites and what they offer the community. Our website with instructions, details on each area card and links to download can be found here.  

How/why did we choose the medium of our project?  

To achieve our project goal, we employed digital storytelling as our primary methodology. Digital storytelling is an emerging form of research method that lends a platform for “rich, descriptive narratives” (Davey et al., 2021, pg. 2). We needed mediums that would play to the strengths of digital storytelling, which lies in its “simplicity, and correspondingly, its accessibility” (Davey et al., 2021, pg. 2). As a group, we reasoned that a project that was accessible but also responsive to the neighborhood's immediate conditions would drive civic engagement. It’s safe to assert that community media provides “channels for participation” (Milan, 2009, pg. 599), so the creation of a boardgame would be a fun way to extend that channel into the community. The website is intended to be an accessory should anyone seek more information about the game's details. Therefore, digital storytelling became the perfect way for us to convey stories in ways that conventional research methods could not. 

In keeping with the theme of nostalgia, we created a boardgame based on neighborhood landscapes. Tvisual elements chosen are deliberate to engage our audience and evoke emotional responses. We wanted the nostalgia to serve a purpose, to provide a “retreat, respite, a way to feel less alone” (Kirsch, 2022). If not nostalgic, we wanted our project to be informative. The decision to create a boardgame with an accompanying website was born out of a need to combine civic engagement, nostalgia, and placemaking. We needed mediums that would play to the strengths of digital storytelling, which lies in its “simplicity, and correspondingly, its accessibility” (Davey et al., 2021, pg. 2). Ultimately, our project, through the boardgame and website, seeks to serve as a catalyst for dialogue, reflection, and appreciation of Regent Park's diverse cultural tapestry. 

Project Reflection  

The game was successful in getting people to think creatively of how different people use different spaces. But above all, people had fun. Before this project, civic engagement was a formality to check a box off. Our project offers a glimpse into what alternative methods of civic engagement look like. A challenge for any form of public engagement is the “tension between community input and knowledge and the knowledge and experience of subject-matter experts” (Jones, 2023, pg. 9). Throughout this course, we have had conversations around apathy towards the revitalization and the SDP. On top of exploring why this feeling exists, we can also find personable ways to engage with residents.  

In line with Norgaard’s (2011) work, apathy embeds itself into the cultural norms of the neighbourhood but also acts as a means of control and self-presentation to the public. How can we engage innovatively with the values and experiences of residents while also making these political conversations comfortable? When trying to get answers for our google form, the idea of tapping into our younger, playful selves to reflect the experience of youth and families stood out. Thinking back on not only our project, but the exhibit as a whole, each group highlighted niche experiences and interests that resonated with a variety of residents in the neighbourhood. While overcoming apathy doesn't inherently result in activism, Zhelnina (2020) highlights this step as "a fundamental building block of political agency" (p. 351). This meant fostering a culture of engagement through a sense of agency, ownership and comfortability in the process. This framing reveals that a “one size fits all” approach to engagement doesn’t always fully represent the interests of residents. Our project reimagines engagement that requires participants to argue with creativity related to matters of feasibility and inclusion of demographics different than themselves. Also, who doesn’t like playing games?

Individuals playing our game during the final exhibition  

We don’t mean to say that this is the first of its kind. In fact, our project is inspired by Daniel D’Oca’s teaching methods and another card game called Kuwaitscapes. But for a community that, as we've discussed, is heavily studied, this informal way to engage is a contrast to how the neighbourhood is treated. We hope this media project helps combat the fatigue of being over-researched and instead, transfers some agency over to the residents. In addition, we hope our project has helped preserve some of the invaluable memories from the neighborhood and that engagement isn’t an active stressor but something to look forward to!  

The RE-VISIT team members are Abdirahman, Ashwini and Roya

Works Cited  

Brail, S., & Lorinc, J. (2023). Rebuilding public housing in Regent Park: The shifting dynamics of financialized redevelopment models. Journal of Planning Education and Research.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456x231183353 

Davey, N. G., & Benjaminsen, G. (2021). Telling Tales: Digital Storytelling as a Tool for Qualitative Data Interpretation and Communication. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 20. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069211022529 

Jones, K. (2023). Community engagement in local communities: hearing the voices of the public. FUTURE OF MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT SERIES, 16:32. Retrieved from  https://www.policyschool.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/AUMA-UP42-ResPapr-CommEngageLocalComm.Jones_.Oct11.pdf 

Kirsch, M. (2022, February 26). The Comforts of Nostalgia. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/26/briefing/nostalgia-oscars-mardi-gras.html 

Milan, S. (2009). Four steps to community media as a development tool. Development in Practice, Volume 19, Numbers 4-5, 598–609. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233218454_Four_steps_to_community_media_as_a_development_tool

Norgaard, K. M. (2011). Living in denial: Climate change, emotions, and everyday life. mit Press. 

Toronto Community Housing. (n.d.). Toronto Community Housing.  https://www.torontohousing.ca/building-construction-and-revitalization/revitalization/regent-park 

Zhelnina, A. (2020). The apathy syndrome: How we are trained not to care about politics. Social Problems, 67(2), 358-378. 

Let’s Play!

Our project is finally taking shape, and at a fast pace at that!  

We started working full steam ahead on the board game idea. Ashwini found this card game made from the LSE Kuwait Program research project ‘Public Space in Kuwait: From user behavior to policymaking". The goal of Kuwaitscapes is to facilitate discussions and encourage players to think about spaces alongside social and physical tools that can improve them. Mechanics-wise, the game requires players to match tool cards to improve an area for a specified character.  

When we did our rounds around Daniel Spectrum asking residents about their favorite place, the importance of family emerged as a narrative. While our class is with adults and not youth like previous years, we still wanted our final project to engage with a wide age range. So, we wanted civic engagement to take on a fun form, a game where the whole family can participate in. 

After getting on the same page, we used Kuwaitscapes as a model for our game and then began to tweak the rules and style to fit our themes of placemaking and nostalgia. The three of us, excited about the inception of this brand-new idea, quickly began to make test cards to play. Roya and Abdi, in their competitive spirit, created as many Tool Cards as possible. The prompts in the Tool Card ranged from “Ball” to “Sunday in the Park.” Ashwini started to draw (rather poorly, except for the Nelson Mandela Park Public School), the Area and Character Cards.  

Ashwini’s beautiful drawing of Nelson Mandela Park Public School.

After we had a decent amount of Tool Cards, we decided to give it a test run. Immediately as we began to play, our game took on a storytelling element, with each player defending the tool they chose with a story that outlined why it was the best way for the ‘Character’ to engage with the ‘Area.’ The rounds also made way for new ideas because we were still struggling on how to incorporate sites that didn’t exist anymore into the game. We finally landed on the following idea, the individual that makes the most compelling case as to why the landmark would be most meaningful to the community they have collected, wins the site (for context: the player who wins gets to keep the Character cards to add to their community after every round).  

Our sample cards

The practice rounds were incredibly uplifting because they were enjoyable, evoked reflections on civic engagement, while also fulfilling our interests at the intersection of nostalgia and placemaking. Overall, we felt proud of our progress. As much as this project is for the community, we equally wanted to reflect the collaboration between the three of us. Although we’ve pivoted our ideas a lot, the narratives theme has remained, and while our project showcases and creates narratives about spaces in Regent Park, it also reflects the narratives we’re making in our collaboration. 

The next step for the group is to create a prototype board, cards, and figures. Abdi has been tasked with recruiting children and youth in Regent Park to draw the areas we have chosen. The decision for children to draw these cards is to evoke a feeling of nostalgia, one of the themes of our project. The rest of us are working on visuals for the cards and board, with our shared Canva ready to go! 

We are also progressing our vision for the website, and the research for the Areas are well underway. For sites that do not exist anymore, Abdi has been tasked with collecting narratives to keep their memory alive. The website will also feature a section where folks can contribute their memories, creating space for dialogue well beyond our project timeline. And perhaps the most challenging task of all, we are brainstorming a title for our game. If all else fails, we may go with RE-VISIT.  

The RE-VISIT team members are Abdirahman, Ashwini, and Roya

Re-Visiting Our Ideas (...again): Breakthrough Edition!

The community media project undertaking has made us appreciate assignments like our papers that allow us to confidently plan it out in our own time and write it as we wish. An academic paper is a product of your own undertaking, one that can be shaped to your own liking and made to fit the narrative you have chosen. Even the most impartial of writers can attest to the fact that it is easier to control the course of your paper, to mould it, to narrate a message you believe in.  

A media project, that too with a civic engagement twist, has been a whole other ball game. We have enjoyed the evolving process so far, but we also admit our inconsistency with what our final product could be. This is in part because the possibilities truly are endless. However, we think we have finally nailed it, and there will be no more changes (fingers crossed) in the final vision. 

Our conversation with Regent Park resident and group member Abdi really helped shape our final pivot. We were brainstorming along the theme of nostalgia, and how nostalgia plays a factor in place-making and affects civic engagement. The storytelling angle of our project led us to brainstorm new and old places around the neighbourhood that we could gather narratives for. Abdi told us about this sacred green box where he and his friends used to hang out.  

The green box, a nostalgic relic for many 90s, early 2000s folks has become an endearing meme.  

Green box meme by X user @loveangelb4by  

Abdi’s green box evoked heartwarming nostalgia. We reflected on the impact of its demise post-redevelopment, and how planners could have a hand in stripping a neighbourhood of its unadorned but significant landmarks. Perhaps the removal of the green box was inevitable, however, the memories made around the box are an immortal part of the fabric of the neighbourhood.  

Abdi’s green box 

While exploring Google Street View from 2009, Abdi pointed out a mural next to the green box. However, just like the green box, it has gone away with the redevelopment. We were sad to hear that at first, but Abdi quickly turned our attention to the photo wall at FOCUS. We were delighted to see that a picture of the mural hangs on the wall today and that its memory is not lost in the redevelopment. Although memories can be powerful, things sometimes slip through the cracks of time. Pictures help capture these memories and turn them into tangible artifacts, which our boardgame and project intends to do – evoke a sense of nostalgia and connection to the built environment both past and present. 

The mural in Google Street View and on the wall at FOCUS

An idea emerged, that an illustration of the green box on a card, or a poster that could immortalize it, would be a fun souvenir for residents that were in the know. This, coupled with an idea we came across from a Harvard professor named Daniel D’Oca, allowed our final idea to take shape. D’Oca asks his students to design and build board games about specific geographies to understand the conflicting agendas of different stakeholders that come together to participate in city building.  

Daniel D’Oca’s Instagram posts detailing the origin and purpose of the board game 

We have been inspired, and we believe this is the  final form our project will take. We want the community to be co-creators of this game. Our initial idea was to approach the Art Hut to include the landmarks we chose in their programming, so the children can draw them. We want to include their artwork to evoke a feeling of nostalgia. If given the opportunity, we would speak to them about the landmarks, so they would also understand what once was, what is still standing, and what has newly emerged.  

Our website then will be a storyboard, with a map illustrating the landmarks we choose. The landmarks will be embedded with a story of its origin, and we still plan to collect narratives which will be featured there. Before folks embark on this storyboard journey, they will be met with a bit of context about our project. We plan to write a blurb about the idea of nostalgia in placemaking and how these two ideas merge to impact civic engagement.  

The RE-VISIT team members are Abdirahman, Ashwini, and Roya

Getting Started

This week, boots were on the ground! Before getting into groups, we did a little activity with the whole class which revolved around asking questions about the different projects. Some of the questions related to our project probed the digital divide and its relation to what we’re doing. With many restaurants and different establishments using QR codes to spread information, we thought our project could be kind of like an introduction to how to use them. This was just an initial thought so we need some further group discussion to figure out.

After the activity, we made our Google form to start gathering some answers. The only required questions on the form were “What's your favorite place in Regent Park?” and “Why is it your favorite place?”. We chose not to make the other questions like their name or how long they lived in Regent Park a requirement in case people wanted to remain anonymous. 

Ears to the street! Photo from a 2010 TPL article about [murmur]

Before we began our boots-on-the-ground mission to collect answers, we also spoke about our vision for exhibition day. Roya had a conversation with fellow classmate Zane, who is part of the Seasoning Stories collective, regarding our QR code concept. Zane mentioned an idea from Spacing magazine. Shawn Micallef, lecturer at the University of Toronto, co-founded [murmur]. According to the magazine, [murmur] is a location-based mobile phone documentary project that has spread to 20 cities globally. The project collects stories to preserve the ethnic, cultural, and community voices of a specific place. 

After the form was done, we decided to explore Daniel Spectrum and start getting some sample answers to help guide us and see if any of our wording needed to be tweaked. We took our laptops to the second floor and asked some of the people sitting down at the tables and benches if they could answer the questions and gave the option for them to write down their own answers on the laptop or if they would prefer us to write it for them. Most people we asked actually were open to a conversation with us about the spaces they liked as we typed. We also asked some of our fellow resident classmates and in total, got roughly 10 answers. From there, we regrouped to identify patterns in people’s answers. 

We noticed that a majority of folks had answered with the Daniels Spectrum building or the field. Some folks also mentioned specific programming like the art classes at Daniels and the Aquatic Center. We decided we would tweak our question to “What's your favorite place in Regent Park? (This could be your favorite place to hang out/shop/eat.)” We figured this would draw out answers other than the common public spaces. There are also plans underway to get the google form to some youth groups with the help of FOCUS Media. We are hoping for a diversity of answers this way. 

Overall, we would say our time was well spent. We got to plan the bigger picture in terms of what our exhibition could be, then we worked backwards from there to see what immediate progress we could make to realize our final vision. The boots-on-the-ground operation also gave us an excuse to approach and make conversation with residents and we look forward to doing more in person interviews. 

Ultimately, the answers we collected left us shocked, and the shock revealed a level of researchers’ bias we hold against the revitalization and its proponents. It gave us a moment to reflect on whether academic discourse or discontent from specific groups of residents really captured the opinions of the wider community. 

Roya and Ashwini before embarking on our mission

Ashwini collecting responses

Making our Google Form

Roya totally winning the class activity

The RE-VISIT team members are Abdirahman, Ashwini, and Roya

Revisiting our Ideas

Before reading week, we came up with the name RE-VISIT for our group, which consists of Regent Park Resident Abdirahman and two UofT students, Ashwini and Roya. At the time we had a vague idea of what we wanted our project to be. Mainly focusing on this idea of sharing narratives about places in Regent Park, we wanted our project to capture stories of the places people call home. Despite juggling different ideas, the group’s collective vision for the project was to create a body of work that empowered people to visit and re-visit the neighborhood with narratives from folks who make up its vibrancy. 

Our group’s brainstorm

After a week’s rest, our team met up to brainstorm and refine our project idea. Going into the meeting we had three goals in mind:  

1. Define what civic engagement means to us and our project.

2. Develop a question that all residents, new or old, would have an answer to.  

3. Decide what form we want our project to take. 

We deliberated on how we could communicate the essence of the neighborhood without isolating anyone. We also wanted to create an opportunity for participation that would evoke a sense of belonging at Regent Park. Therefore, the research question guiding our project is: How do you take a built form and make it your own?  

Goal 1

With constant change in the built environment, the built form of Regent Park being developed today is quite new to all residents in the neighborhood. The new reality has placed new and old residents at uncomfortable odds. We had to ask ourselves what purpose our project would serve the community. Also, with civic engagement as the central tenet of the project, we had to brainstorm a balance that would truly engage all residents of the community.  

Goal 2

Next, we brainstormed a list of questions we could ask Regent Park residents to capture their neighborhood and create some sense of placemaking. After running through a few, we decided to keep it simple and stick with: What is your favorite spot in Regent Park?  

We chose this question because we thought it would prompt an organic response that would show us where people have found their comfort within the neighborhood. The potential for overlap in favorite spots would also be an opportunity for people to come together and think about ways in which they are similar, at a time when differences have taken center stage.  

Goal 3 

One thing we struggled with during our brainstorming process was finding a connection between all our different ideas. On one of our first days, Abdi came forward with an amazing project idea concerning the digital divide, but we also wanted to experiment with QR codes and augmented reality. These ideas were pretty much polar opposites, but we still wanted to see how we can bridge them together.  

We decided to have a website as our main form of media but also create a physical version as a welcoming gift or album-like print copy of all our potential stories. We reckoned with the fact that much of community media, or opportunities for civic engagement are largely available on digital platforms now. Since we were taken with the idea about bridging digital divide, we want to expand our narrative collection process to include more in-person methods like through word of mouth, physical notes or printed forms into mailboxes. 

The nature of this week’s session was to brainstorm and have a clear understanding of what we want our media project to do - which we think we accomplished. Going into next week, we are excited to begin gathering answers and seeing where they lead us to.

The RE-VISIT team members are Abdirahman, Ashwini, and Roya