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