The Changing Cultures of Regent Park
Each year, I fundraise for the class to support FOCUS staff, provide resident participants stipends (since they do not receive course credit), offer dinner and childcare to make participation possible for residents, and finance costs associated with the public exhibition and individual projects. I have received support from the SSHRC Partnership Engagement Grant (2021), School of Cities (2019-2025), and the Centre for Community Partnerships (2019-2025).
Additionally, the course website (https://www.uoftxrpfocus.com/) serves as an archive of a rapidly changing neighbourhood, with each project capturing moments in time as well as enduring realities. Past projects on the website are also required materials for current students, so each year the class collectively contributes to future students’ learning. Project teams must blog about their co-creation process on the website so that everyone can follow each teams’ journey and provide feedback. This disciplined documentation facilitates individual and collective reflections about urban planning and policy, identity politics, reciprocity, the experience of working in diverse groups to conduct and translate research, and the nature of knowledge production.
The winter 2025 semester marked the five-year anniversary of the course. I organized a retrospective in April 2025 inviting all course alumni to attend and witness how their creative works inspired the participants that came after them. Over 125 U of T and Regent Park community members attended. To celebrate our collaboration, FOCUS and I produced a 35-minute documentary about the course highlighting the participants’ experiences and learning, which was screened at the public exhibition. This five-year (and growing) partnership with FOCUS and Regent Park residents speaks to the ability of this class to create sustainable social change and the mutually beneficial relationship our students and university have with Regent Park.
Lastly, the class also serves as a data collection site for two of my own research projects: 1) understanding the important role community media organizations play in neighbourhoods and 2) investigating the often-ignored Muslim identity of the neighbourhood (which I further elaborate on in the Disciplinary Research section). I have presented on the innovative pedagogy of the course across U of T, at other universities, and at academic conferences (see Pedagogical Leadership and Innovation section).
U of T news coverage about class can be found here: https://www.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-students-and-regent-park-teens-team-bust-stereotypes-tell-stories-changing-neighbourhood
This undergrad/grad course is an ongoing collaboration with the non-profit organization FOCUS Media Arts, established to counter negative stereotypes of the Regent Park community in the news and provide journalism production training and media literacy to residents living in the area. This class not only empowers students to engage responsibly with media to advance social justice but also creates sustainable partnerships that benefit both the university and the Regent Park community through knowledge mobilization beyond traditional academic boundaries.
Over the past twenty years, scholars and journalists have studied and written extensively about the Regent Park neighbourhood and its mixed-income redevelopment process, but marginalized perspectives – such as that of youth or Muslim residents – are missing from those publications. The class and FOCUS Media Arts share the mission to centre and elevate residents’ lived experience, accounting for as many different viewpoints as possible. The class has focused on various themes responding to local current events. In 2019, the course examined the neighbourhood’s redevelopment/gentrification from the perspective of youth; in 2020 the course addressed the role of religion in the neighbourhood, in 2022 the course investigated neighbourhood’s dynamic history of immigration and public health; in 2024 the course explored civic engagement in the neighbourhood; and in 2025 the course studied economic justice.
University of Toronto undergraduate and graduate students work alongside Regent Park residents to learn about the rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood's history. Classes take place at the FOCUS Media Arts Centre and draw on the situated knowledge of residents, community media, popular culture, academic journal articles, mainstream media, as well as in-class discussion, neighbourhood walks, and media-making. U of T students and Regent Park residents collaborate and work in small groups to create media projects addressing neighbourhood issues or concerns. The class shares these multimedia products through a public exhibition and website. (See course site and projects here: https://www.uoftxrpfocus.com/). These creative projects are forms of original research and knowledge mobilization accessible beyond the academy.
Example projects that challenge dominant narratives and advocate for urban justice include:
A satirical infomercial exposing how inaccessible the neighbourhood's new public amenities are to longtime social housing residents.
An interactive timeline embedding the life story of one Regent Park youth resident into the history of the redevelopment.
A video contextualizing what it means to be a young Muslim woman from Regent Park in the broader narrative of Islamophobia in Toronto.
A board game teaching players about community development and the history of specific places in Regent Park.
A documentary highlighting the many voices (and the lack thereof) in the Social Development Plan.
A cookbook sharing immigration stories to Regent Park with tasty and meaningful recipes, highlighting local ethnic businesses such as the Regent Park Café.
A podcast and article investigating how community gardens in Regent Park promote food security and economic justice.
A comic book analysing one resident’s inspiring story of co-founding a local café.