Documenting Religious In-Betweenness in Regent Park

Designed as a utopian “Garden City” project for the Anglo-Celtic working class of Toronto in the 1950s, Regent Park has become the epitome of urban decline and redemption in mainstream narratives of Toronto’s history (Jamil 2015, p. 232). Although it is difficult to pinpoint precisely where the “decline” began, it is clear that the stigmatization of the neighbourhood can be traced to the increase in immigrants from non-Anglo or European background with the neighbourhood being pathologized as “black and crime-ridden” (Jamil 2015, p. 324). Although the demographic makeup of the community has not changed much since the influx of “visible minority” migrants in the 1970s and 1980s, discourses surrounding the area have entirely reversed with the optimism brought on by the revitalization project taking place at the moment. With this drastic turn in public perception, there is perhaps no better group to turn to than the Muslim community, specifically the young Muslim women of Regent Park, to begin understanding how this changing neighbourhood affects daily lives.   

As a highly stigmatized physical expression of faith, the hijab conveys the religious identity of Muslim women, offering contrasting experiences of belonging depending on the socio-spatial context that they find themselves in. In Regent Park, young Muslim women feel safe and culturally inclusive in a community that shares their faith; being Muslim is a common way of life that unites Regent Park residents. However, our conversations with female Muslim teen residents revealed that outside of Regent Park, being Muslim is seen as a massive part of their identities. The hijab visually denotes Muslim women by their religious affiliation. While a common sight in Regent Park, the veil invites micro-aggressions and harassment from strangers when residents leave the neighbourhood. Muslim women are not seen as individuals with their unique relationships to their faith but are viewed as a representation of the “other” that is unwelcome and dangerous (Nagra, 2018).

These negative assumptions from the outside inwards threaten the right for Muslim women to practice their faith. Maryam, a Muslim classmate of our Diva Girls, mentions how she often does not wear her hijab outside of Regent Park, despite doing so in her neighbourhood, because of the backlash she might face in other areas of the city. Maryam specifically uses the words: “I barely practice my religion outside of Regent [Park],” implying that wearing the hijab is not a passive banality but is an intentional garb that is meant to signify something every minute that it is worn. As such, the veil offers new ways of looking at how Muslim women negotiate their notions of piety while challenging accepted assumptions of what it means to a “progressive, modern, and cosmopolitan Muslim woman” (Aljunied 2017, p. 104).

Diva Girls, Sumeya and Fazra, state that while they know what reactions to expect from other people when inside Regent Park, they do not know how they will be treated when outside of the community as young Muslim women. “Going out of the community, there are so many people that just stare at you as if you’re some type of sculpture,” says Fazra. Living in an ethnoburb, like Regent Park, represents a positive way for these young Muslim women to reaffirm their presence in Toronto and their “right to the city.” (Qadeer, 2014). Regent Park provides community public space for these young women to freely practice and express their religious identities without hesitation or fear.

At the onset of our project, we planned to produce a website that would feature artistic crowd-sourced content from Regent Park youth that depicts their experiences and feelings of in-betweenness. We created an online submission portal through which Regent Park youth could share their multi-media representations of their religious in-betweenness, such as drawings, photographs, poems, short stories, videos, and audio recordings. However, with the unprecedented spread of the COVID-19, we did not have the response we anticipated from the neighbourhood residents nor the Diva Girls, for everyone’s responsibilities and concerns shifted with the drastic changes in our way of life. While the extenuating circumstances of COVID-19 have obstructed our learning and ability to meet in-person, we believe that these circumstances have positively impacted our project, put aptly by group member Alejandra in the mantra: “Creativity out of scarcity.” Therefore, we relied on the material that we already had from the interviews we conducted alongside the Diva Girls and what was available online. We decided that synthesizing our findings into a video format that told stories of in-betweenness both verbally and visually.

Regardless of the changing nature of the outcome of the final product, we wanted to emphasize Asthana’s (2017) theory of “translation and localization,” whereby young people refashion broader cultural understandings to reflect their localized social realities. The universal is not rejected but is instead contextualized to reflect the local cultural identity (Asthana, 2017). Highlighting the Diva Girls’ spoken testimony allowed us to elevate their voices as a means of contextualizing faith in Regent Park and Toronto as a whole. Their accounts, in conjunction with the external voice clips, provide is a juxtaposition of the narrative most commonly produced by the media where the Muslim faith, and the hijab, in particular, are centered as the cause of Islamophobic discrimination and harassment.

Our project intends to address the following question: “How do young Muslim women experience in-betweenness in Regent Park and Toronto more broadly?” Our team name, POI: Points of Intersection, refers to the intersectionality that manifests itself in the combination of two cultures (Islamic and Canadian). Through our conversations with the Diva Girls, they explained that they experience points of intersection as they traverse between their neighbourhood community of religious solidarity and the outside world that carries its prejudice and discrimination. We aimed to provide nuances to the injustices that they may experience daily, conveying the complex and varied lived experiences of female Muslim teenagers. Our project intends to open up a larger conversation about Muslim identity in Canada and how it is not monolithic. Western culture tends to portray the Muslim female experience with a Hijab as one of oppression, fueled by cultural explanations of patriarchy that posit gender inequalities in Muslim communities as a result of Islam (Nagra, 2018). Misconceptions of Muslim women as passive victims of their culture works to marginalize and increasingly “other” them in mainstream Canadian society, perpetuating Islamophobia.

Sumeya and Atiya mention how Islam makes them better people through committing to frequent prayer and performing good deeds, disrupting externally imposed images of their identities. These experiences can be corroborated further by Aljunied (2017) not only as an expression of faith but also as a way of showing their “ability to deal with prejudice, stigma, bias, and intolerance, in a composed and respectable way that demonstrates openness and confidence” (p. 112). Through sharing such experiences of our Diva Girls, our video highlights the strength and altruism that Islam garners. We wanted to create content to which other young Muslim women can relate to continue the ongoing process of finding justice in the city for themselves and their community. We also wanted to inform and educate those who are not Muslim of the complexities and nuances of being a young Muslim woman in Toronto.

The lessons we take away from this experience are threefold and have proven to be impactful examples of how media can create and change discourses surrounding entire cities, neighbourhoods, and people. In the broadest sense, Regent Park’s position to Toronto provided a solid basis for understanding the context in which we were working. Despite all three of us having lived in Toronto for many years, none of us had ever spent any extended time in Regent Park. This course provided us with the unique opportunity to better understand and investigate how the discourses surrounding neighbourhood came to be and how the Diva Girls, in particular, feel that it impacts their lives outside of the community. Although we can learn about the grand policy and housing plans for Regent Park via lecture or readings, this secondary knowledge pales in comparison to the lived experiences of the “revitalization.”

At the neighbourhood level, it became evident the vital role that Regent Park Focus plays in the community and for the Diva Girls. As we aim to show in our final media product, the impact that community and support from something as informal as friends at a mosque or the more structured Regent Park Focus, provides an invaluable resource for forming the strong identity that the Diva Girls have. Despite the experiences of discrimination, they recounted to us either because of their hijab or various other micro-aggressions, Regent Park kept resurfacing as a point of pride, comfort, and security. However, the Regent that they consistently referred to is “Old Regent,” where the original buildings and spatial configuration existed across the entire neighbourhood, a pocket of which still exists in the Northside of the neighbourhood delineated by Gerrard Street East. Their attachment to a specific type of Regent Park is corroborated by Rahder and MacLean’s (2013) idea that “identity and behaviours will always have spatial implications” (p. 158), demonstrating the vital role that neighbourhood organizations, such as Regent Park Focus, play in community and identity development. 

As has been an essential aspect of our coursework throughout our academic careers, understanding lived experiences and respecting local knowledge became a large part of our learning experience. Going on the walking tour with the Diva Girls allowed us to be active listeners as a group, engaging with the personal significance imbued in the sites that they showed us. The excitement with which the Diva Girls talked about showing us where there had been a shooting a few summers ago was a moment where the benefits of having a connection with the Diva Girls and an understanding of their lived experience became most important. The experiences of the course and the creation of the media project, in conjunction with the Diva Girls, deepened our understanding of how to enter and engage with spaces with different material and social realities than our own, a skill valuable not only for future projects in urban planning or design but also throughout our lives.

Watch our final project below:

The POI: Points of Intersection team members are Alejandra, Atiya, Brittany, Nathan, and Sumeya.

References

Aljunied, K. (2017). Hijabis as Purveyors of Muslim Cosmopolitanism. In Muslim Cosmopolitanism: Southeast Asian Islam in Comparative Perspective (pp. 102-130). Edinburgh University Press.

Asthana, S. (2017, January 10). Translation and localization of children’s rights in youth-produced digital media in the Global South: A hermeneutic exploration. New Media & Society, 19(5), 686-700. doi:/10.1177/1461444816686320

Jamil, U. (2015, September 7). Making place: Muslims in the neighbourhood. Contemporary Islam, 9(3), 321-335. doi:10.1007/s11562-015-0346-y

Nagra, B. (2018, May 7) Cultural Explanations of Patriarchy, Race, and Everyday Lives: Marginalizing and “Othering” Muslim Women in Canada, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 38(2), 263-279, doi:10.1080/13602004.2018.1466488

Qadeer, M. A. (2014). Viewpoint: The Multicultural City. Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 23(1), 116-126. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/26195271

Rahder, B. & MacLean, H. (2013). Other Ways of Knowing Your Place: Immigrant Women’s Experience of Public Space in Toronto. Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 22(1), 145-166. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26193930

Interviews and Call for Submissions

This session's goal was to continue with the research, outline our goals for the project, and begin production. As a group, we prioritize examining the material we gather from primary sources, as we want the data to guide the direction of our project. Therefore we began the session by reviewing the two recorded interviews that Sumeya and Atiya conducted since our last meeting.

Of the two realized interviews, one of them was of Atiya's and Sumeya's fellow Diva Girl, Fazra. The other was of their friend from school, Maryam. Although both of these interviewees are girls around the age of sixteen, they have unique connections to their religion and lived experiences. We were impressed by the professionalism that the girls demonstrated during the interview process while questioning their friends, a task that can be difficult to do. 

In the middle of the session, Brittany, Atiya, and Sumeya walked around Regent Park, visiting and taking photos of places that our Diva Girls feel best represents their religious expression within their neighbourhood. While we are also working alongside Atiya and Sumeya, we also value their responses as Regent Park residents from whom we wish to learn.

We recapped the thematic ideas and premise for the project that we established last week and fleshed them out in more detail. We further focused our project on showcasing the lived experiences of Regent Park youth, and thus want our website to be as inclusive and interactive as possible for the young contributors and intended audience.

Photo taken by Sumeya

As such, we decided that our website will feature artistic crowd-sourced content that visually depicts the feelings of in-betweenness that youth from Regent Park experience. Alejandra is creating the online submission portal through which Regent Park youth can share their depictions of their religious in-betweenness (in the form of drawings, photographs, writing, etc.).

For next week, we have tasked Atiya and Sumeya with conducting four more interviews together using the updated questions below:

1. What is your religion?

2. Do you consider yourself religious?

3. How do you feel that religion is portrayed to other people?

4. How does it feel to practice your faith in Regent Park?

5. How does it feel outside of Regent Park?

6. From the experiences you described, which places in Regent Park were you thinking about?

We refined our interview questions from last week based on feedback from Professor Mehta, as our initial question of "How close are you to your religion?" was not producing a meaningful answer that we could analyze. Therefore we broke that question up into parts that would serve as a funnel to understand the interviewee's point of view from a general statement to a more specific one. We also added a final interview question to learn which places around Regent Park interviewees reference. We want to have tangible places in the neighbourhood to visit, study, and take photographs.

It was challenging to find the right words to formulate the interview questions, as well as the text that will be used to crowd-source artistic submissions. Although we know what kind of response or information we would like to garner, it is difficult to know which language would be best understood by participants. Additionally, although we have some idea in our minds about what people may share based on what we have learned so far about Regent Park residents' experiences, we never want to ask questions that assume an answer. We want to approach people with open minds, without any preconceptions about their lived experiences.

Professor Mehta shared with us two sites of media projects that followed natural disasters that are very relevant to us. These two websites are excellent models of what we want to create for this project:

• https://www.sandystoryline.com/

• http://landofopportunityinteractive.com/#/home

The online submission portal is now live at https://pointsofintersection.wixsite.com/regentpark. To raise awareness about our project to attract submissions, we will be reaching out to youth community groups and encouraging all of the Diva Girls to share the link on their social media. Our team is excited to see what young residents of Regent Park will submit!

Members of POI: Points of Intersection are Alejandra, Atiya, Brittany, Nathan, and Sumeya.

In-Betweenness in Toronto/Regent Park

During this session, our group aimed to identify the format of our project, develop an implementation plan, and begin researching how people experience in-betweenness in Toronto/Regent Park.

When discussing the media format that we wanted our final project to take, both Atiya and Sumeya voiced an interest in taking photos. In a previous meeting, when the Diva Girls were not present, our group had discussed the possibility of creating a zine. However, Atiya and Sumeya were not as excited about the idea. When they learned that our thinking behind creating a zine was motivated by our interest in having the girls directly contribute to the project through their own pieces without filtering their thoughts through us, they were very receptive to the format.

Through further discussion, we realized we wanted a format that was more up-to-date and accessible to today's youth. As such, we plan to produce a multimedia webpage instead, where we can still feature a variety of individual pieces, like a zine, but in a more interactive and relevant medium.

With Professor Mehta’s support, we came up with four questions that we will use to interview Regent Park residents about how they experience in-betweenness in Toronto/Regent Park. The questions are as follows:

1. How close are you to your religion?

2. How do you feel that religion is portrayed to other people?

3. How does it feel to practice your faith in Regent Park?

4. How does it feel outside of Regent Park?

We tested the above questions with both Atiya and Sumeya to ensure that they are easily understood by those being interviewed to ensure that we can increase the likelihood of capturing meaningful responses. We both recorded and typed key takeaways from the interviews to obtain the most accurate qualitative data.

Our proposed project timeline for next week consists of our Diva Girls interviewing at least two of their friends and/or family members by our next meeting on March 9. We sent them the interview questions the following day on our group chat with a reminder to record the interview with their interviewee's consent as well as to document their first name, last initial, and age. Depending on how many people the girls interview this week, we will continue conducting interviews in the following weeks. Atiya and Sumeya will continue interviewing their social network on their own, in addition to the group speaking with the Diva Girls from other groups during class to garner additional content as needed. We plan that our Diva Girls will interview at least five people each, with the goal to interview as many as ten in total. 

Proposed Timeline

On a personal level, through various icebreaker games and getting their opinions on the project, we were able to connect on a deeper level with our Diva Girls. By learning about not just their life stories (the icebreaker) but also what they are interested in on a creative level, helped us better tailor the project to make sure that they can contribute equally and in a way that's meaningful to them. Though it was initially a bit difficult to get that "buy-in" from Sumeyia and Attiya, bringing up more relevant platforms for the project as well as examples of how it could look allowed us to "breakthrough" and hit a stride near the end of our meeting. We recognize this was only our second meeting in which we directly worked with them and that the process of getting to know them will take time. Still, the experience this week was immensely gratifying and leaves us even more excited for next week!

Post by TikToker Aabida, 2020

here are many resources we can look to when creating our webpage, as there is relevant content on social media platforms, including TikTok. The city and social experiences are very complex, and we must approach them with a curious and open mind and absorb all the information we can gather to then respond to or address what we inference from that. As we are collaborating as a group, it is essential to make decisions that the majority is happy, and that makes sense for the project, considering all opinions. Though sometimes one's idea may not be preferred/feasible, it is important to continue supporting the direction that the project is taking with enthusiasm. As we are looking to produce something by looking at many sources of information, the opinion and support of our professor and the Regent Park support staff are a great source to receive feedback.

POI: Points of Intersection members are Alejandra, Atiya, Brittany, Nathan, and Sumeya.

POI: Points of Intersection

During this session we consolidated our team, which will focus on the individual experience of faith and religion in Regent Park. We will address the following question: “How do people experience in-betweenness in Toronto/Regent Park?” 

We decided that our team name will be POI: Points of Intersection. We chose this name because it refers to the intersectionality that manifests itself in the combination of two cultures (Islamic and Canadian). Through our conversations with the Diva Girls during class, they explained that they experience points of intersection as they traverse between their neighbourhood community of religious solidarity and the outside world that carries its own prejudice and discrimination. 

We had the unique opportunity to receive a personal tour of the neighbourhood with our Diva Girls, Sumeya and Atiya, where they shared their lived experiences and first-hand knowledge. Among many things, they told us about the Regent Park Film festival, and how it has changed over time. Before it would include films that were culturally significant to local residents, but as it has gained widespread public attention and has attracted many attendees from outside of Regent Park, the festival predominately shows classic films in English. The girls explained that the gentrification of the festival is unfortunately not an isolated occurrence, and echoes what has been happening throughout Regent Park as it has become more exclusive following the revitalization. 

Because our topic is based around people, it was difficult to gain meaningful information about how their identity as Muslim Canadian women has influenced either how they experience the city or how they feel the city experiences them.  However, what was interesting to note was Atiya and Sumeya pointing out a tag on the sidewalk “We Eid Together” that referred to the intra-faith tensions that exist in the community. Their explanation of the tension, the situation, and what the tag meant shows just how in tune with the neighbourhood they both are as a passerby from outside Regent Park or perhaps a new resident would have no idea what the tag meant.  

As such, this course is helping us more deeply understand the lived experience of faith within Regent Park by immersing ourselves in the neighbourhood through frequent visits, experiential research, and first-hand conversations with residents. Though the Diva Girls in our group make fun of their neighbourhood by saying that it is “the ghetto” or point out what they dislike about the new development, this piece of Toronto is their home and the place they are growing up, forming friendships, and living their daily lives. Their nostalgia about how the neighbourhood used to be demonstrates how the revitalization has severed ethno-cultural ties. The girls discussed how the neighbourhood’s sports field is often inaccessible to residents due to sports teams and white residents from outside of the community monopolizing the space.

Photo of Regent Park Athletic Grounds (taken by authors)

It is difficult to pinpoint one tangible area of interest when we are looking at individual experience of intersectionality. Perhaps we will want to look at people’s experiences that stand out, or those that are very common. For now, we have a general idea of where we want to take this project, though it seems we often talk about ethno-cultural discrimination in the city that manifests itself in the accesibilty to public space or lack thereof. We plan to have further conversations with Atiya and Sumeya about which direction we would collectively like the project to take to ensure that they are equal participants in shaping the final media project. 

Something that we should focus on moving forward is to make sure that we are keeping our Diva Girls engaged throughout the session. To keep the conversation flowing, we could ask them questions ranging from mundane topics about “what the purpose of a space is” to “how does this space reflect your religion or your community?” Perhaps deciding on four or five questions on Sunday evening or on the way over to Regent Park can help guide our discussion about the expression of faith in the city. 

We anticipate that our project format will be a zine and would like to interview different residents of Regent Park regarding their lived experiences with faith, alongside the contributions of Atiya and Sumeya. We understand that contacting residents and conducting interviews may not be feasible within the limited work schedule for the course. As such, any strategies or resources that Dr. Mehta and the Regent Park staff could provide us to find interview subjects or garner meaningful qualitative data another way would be extremely beneficial. If this is not possible, interviewing other Diva Girls may be a possible solution, pending their availability as we appreciate that their time will be focused on working on their groups’ projects. 

Members of POI: Points of Intersection are Alejandra, Atiya, Brittany, Nathan, and Sumeya.