After hearing about the stories in the upbringing of Halima and Humaira in the Carousel Cafe last week, we debriefed further this past Tuesday during our online meeting. As many of our visual-thinker teammates grew overwhelmed with describing the books’ storyboard with words, Jamie recommended using a digital whiteboard to collaborate our different ideas on the book while also often importantly reminding us to strengthen and solidify our storyline first before brainstorming on the small, less-relevant details…thank you, Jamie!
Special thanks to Eric for screenshotting our visual storyboard brainstorm, as the original files were deleted after 24 hours with our Miro free trial… oops! Thank you, Eric!
We are considering featuring Humaira as the ‘protagonist’ of our narrative, and experiencing economic injustices through displacement should be the theme of our story. We quickly turned to our notes and began developing our idea for our comic book, the title of which is the same as our project. Born in the building where Daniels Spectrum stands, she is a Regent Parker through and through. As she continuously faced displacement by the redevelopment, from the north to the south and back… she now owns the Carousel Cafe in Daniels Spectrum. Talk about a full circle, huh? While her successes are impressive and should be celebrated, she and other Regent Parkers who face similar struggles and efforts to bridge the gaps of economic injustices through informal businesses have stories we believe must be told. Hence, Humaira’s story brings us to our project title: Where Did My Neighbours Go? We now ask, where did HER neighbours go?
You are listening to the story of Humaira and also the inspiration for our latest vision for the project.
Documenting our process: Jamie’s visual refined brainstorming after reviewing Eric’s screenshots
Our group met again on Thursday during class time to solidify the brainstorming from our last meeting and worked extensively on building a storyboard that we want to refine through our continued qualitative work. This was very valuable for Jamie in drafting some comic book frames and for Eric to focus on taking reference photos early, which will likely be in the final book. This will also become a platform from which we have a finalized narrative ‘format’ that we can use as a derivative for the many upcoming media pieces that we will eventually have to submit in the course and will ensure consistency in the various narratives with our comic book. Naturally, we encountered some back and forth over two lengthy meetings about what this would look like, having not completed all our desired data collection. After class was dismissed on Thursday, we finally landed on an agreed vision and developed some drafts for the plots to our media pieces from there. We feel comfortable introducing you to what we have so far:
The Comic Book is set in the present day; a fictional little girl pays a visit to the Carousel Cafe after hearing some looming news about Phase 4 and 5 of the redevelopment. Working at the cafe, Humaira is overheard mentioning the fact that she owns a cafe in the same block of Regent Park that she was born in. This prompts the question: Where did your neighbours go? Humaira repeating the question for herself is the title of our group and the comic book (very corny but we dig it). From here, she begins retelling her story about what Regent Park was like before. (If you have watched Forrest Gump or Benjamin Button, they follow a very similar format). Humaira and the girl then set forth on an abstract “journey” of going through the different places Humaira grew up in and how each of her life events affected her as she retells the story. A concluding section depicts the younger girl reflecting on the story, pondering with the reader about how she might be able to do the same for her community in the future during Phase 4 & 5.
Podcast: We aim to have a podcast with the one and only Humaira to know more of her story growing up. Rather than piece together sensory tidbits of the cafe’s environment (and an incompatible studio schedule with our most confident interviewers Kaitlyn and Farhana) we plan on having a sit-down interview with her paralleling our comic book. It would begin with when she was young and her present-day role in delivering economic justice to the neighbourhood. Our podcast will be paired with a clear timeline, with personal insights from all of us interrupting the interview as needed to mimic the role played by the little girl in the comic book to reflect on the story and then connect it with empirical and qualitative insights beyond Regent Park. We hope to showcase her story with our audience (whilst respecting her privacy of course) and simultaneously bring them out of the Carousel Cafe with the insights that could be drawn from it, to reflect more on their own personal experiences and understanding of economic injustices.
Journalism piece: A more formalized and non-translated itinerary of our findings, Humaira’s story, and some literature review of similar instances in Regent Park where the same conclusion could be drawn in the context of our investigation. The narrative landscape used in the Comic Book and in the podcast will be featured to produce a more engaging piece and keep the reader hooked.
As we wrapped up our meeting on Thursday, happy with what we have so far, we also created a clearer division of work between us that is best to our ability and allows freer progression of the project without being as dependent on hosting meetings:
Eric, our technical brain, will start taking more amazing reference photos for our three forums and be in charge of audio edits on our podcast.
Jamie, our creative director, will start creating illustration drafts for the comic book while keeping us on track with project development, giving us constant feedback on structure and next steps, and pulling us out of out-of-topic conversations that the other three talkers love to do.
Farhana, our project consultant, will continue to give us great ideas on how to proceed, the different angles we should take when telling the story, and advice. She will also overview and edit our progress using her resident insider scope and professional experiences. We are extremely grateful for her outside and inside the classroom.
Kaitlyn, our creative coordinator, will remain involved in character design alongside Jamie’s illustrations, coordinate and plan interviews with community members via Farhana’s connections, and help ensure qualitative standards are maintained in our research findings.
We look forward to updating you on our project and showing you our deliverables!
The team members of Where did my neighbours go? are Eric, Farhana, Jamie, and Kaitlyn