Looking Back One Last Time

Renee’s thoughts:

Going from just breaking the ice with everyone in this class to making teams, working together on research, and creating a documentary film has been an unforgettable experience.

When we went over the documentary draft that Lexie produced, a lot of positive feedback was given, and our group was pleased with what Lexie made. While watching the draft, it felt like a comforting and safe space, where Sureya was sharing her experiences while educating us on the happenings here at Regent Park. There was a great sense of warmth throughout, and it didn’t bore me compared to other documentaries I’ve watched. The story produced felt genuine and deeply personal. I think as a group we all very much loved the ending, where Lexie was able to find a clip of Mothers of Peace going on one of their nature trips, to Niagara Falls specifically. It felt healing after watching the middle section of the film, where we mostly learned about gun violence, community centres, and the need for a community.

From Lexie:

This week was defined by the intensity of editing, long hours spent cutting, rearranging, and second-guessing decisions as we tried to do justice to the story we were entrusted with. The process was honestly stressful at times, especially balancing pacing, tone, and making sure the narrative felt both cohesive and respectful. Despite that pressure, seeing the draft come together and hearing such positive feedback from both my group and others was incredibly reassuring. It felt like a turning point where the project shifted from something uncertain into something meaningful and real.

This moment has pushed me to start thinking ahead: the documentary is nearing completion, so my focus is beginning to transition toward the final article/essay, where I’ll need to reflect more critically on the themes we’ve explored and the urban issues shaping Regent Park.

Alpha’s thoughts:

Spending our second to last class of this semester, I also realized that this is going to be some of our group members’–as well as our classmate’s–last weeks as students of UofT. From strangers and to friends who worked, debated, and contributed to this project, I felt that we had formed a special bond.

The documentary that Lexie had devoted hours— days to make was heartfelt and makes us feel grateful that there are people like Sureya. Personally, I admire Sureya's power in bringing together and creating a safe place for vulnerable mothers who had lost their children to gun violence. Beyond that, the documentary is very educational and raises awareness that gun violence is not only an issue rooted in Regent Park, but something that occurs in all places, at random intervals.

For the exhibition next week, I hope that our documentary becomes a part of a milestone that helps Regent Park take shape as a place that endorses hope and community engagement.

The whole Yellow Brick Road team has poured their hearts into this project, and every member is excited to present our final documentary on Thursday. As part of our project, we wanted to feature some recent events both Sureya and MOPRP have been a part of.

Mothers of Peace Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/mothersofpeacerp/

Louis March Park:
https://nowtoronto.com/news/a-place-for-connection-and-healing-regent-park-green-space-renamed-after-anti-gun-violence-advocate-louis-march/

Who should be on the bank notes:
www.tvo.org/article/who-should-be-on-canadas-new-bank-note

The Road Ahead

After last week’s turbulence and last-minute changes with our research question, Yellow Brick Road has now shifted our focus towards a more meaningful direction— the story of Mothers of Peace. Specifically, we aim to address the question “How does Mothers of Peace impact Regent Park and Downtown East neighbourhoods' identity when discussing topics of safety and community, and their correlations?”

This week we conducted two interviews, one with a younger resident in Regent Park and the other being Sureya Ibrahim, the founder of Mothers of Peace of Regent Park. Both were able to provide us with significant insights to finalize our project.

We interviewed Tiffany, who was born and raised in Regent Park. Her family previously lived on Sumach Street, in a building that is now a retirement home, but she admitted that she feels little nostalgia for the old neighbourhood. For Tiffany, the lack of elevators in the original buildings was a major deterrent, posing a constant inconvenience for people with disabilities and those arriving home at night. She also remembers the old entrances being crowded by people smoking or playing cards, making the physical upgrades of the redevelopment a welcome change. Interestingly, Tiffany noted that the shift to high-rise living feels safer, recalling from a text that she had read, saying that taller buildings create a sense of being watched over. Regarding the frequent appearance of police officers in the area, Tiffany said older residents see them as a stabilizing force for the elderly, even while acknowledging the complex “backfire” racialization and social stigma that often accompanies their presence.

In our interview with Sureya Ibrahim, she emphasized that safety in Regent Park is deeply rooted in community care, rather than in formal institutions alone. With her organization in mind, she wants to create a safe space for mothers to come, whether it's regarding grief, family problems, or feelings of being lost. These initiatives are not only about engaging with the community, but also about building a sense of belonging, particularly for women who have lost their family members or children to gun violence. What’s great is that her organization also has people across the GTA, including Etobicoke, Mississauga, and Scarborough. Furthermore, Sureya also highlighted the importance of familiarity and trust when we questioned her about the surveillance in the neighbourhood. While she did not express a specific viewpoint on the police and security, she noted that neighbourhood-based officers tend to be more empathetic and connected to members of the community. Whereas, outside officers responding to incidents can feel distant or hostile. Overall, what we learned from our interview was that Regent Park is more about community care and meaningful spaces for mothers navigating through loss and everyday life, rather than purely focusing on crime reduction.

With the interviews complete, we have begun the creation process for the documentary. When talking with Sureya, it became clear that her interview would be the main focus of the documentary, and that community safety through participation in organizations like Mothers of Peace would be our main focus, while also discussing the topic of gun violence and importance youth programming.

We have created a very broad outline for the documentary on the points we want to hit:

CHUNK	CONCEPT	ROUGH TIMING	NOTES
1	Introducing community care concept. “The community is home”.	0:00-1:15	Do we need music? Might take away from the documentary, but also sometimes silences in the interview are awkward.
2	Revitalization: then vs. now, why is there a violence/drug issue in Regent Park? "What else can we do?"	1:15-4:10
3	How did Mothers of Peace start? "What is wrong with these people?" "It start(ed) making me angry" "It was very bad"	4:10-8:10
4	Media coverage of Regent Park / Advocating for the community "I became very defensive when it came to my community" "(Does) he deserve to die?" "You don't take away where there is a need"	8:10-11:55	Getting clips from the stories Sureya is talking about
5	The Need for Community Care: What MOPRP Does. "It has to be a wrap-around system)	11:55-14:25	Want to put in a montage of posts about mothers, more videos from their channel.
6	Police Presence in the neighbourhood	14:25-16:05	We have some clips of the incident Sureya alludes to in the video
7	Concluding Statement	16:05-17:25

After the turbulence of last week and the uncertainty around our research direction, finally finding a clear narrative feels like a weight has been lifted. Speaking with Tiffany and Sureya helped us see the story we truly want to tell. Now, as we move into creating the documentary, there’s a renewed sense of purpose and clarity, knowing we’re telling a story that matters both to the neighbourhood and to us as a team.

Throughout our interviews with Tiffany and Sureya, it’s clear that Regent Park’s story is about the people who shape the neighbourhood through care, connection, and resilience. Mothers of Peace is a shining example of this: creating spaces where safety, community, and belonging go hand in hand, and reminding us that real change comes from the relationships and support networks built within the community itself. Our documentary can and will bring these voices to the forefront, showing how one organization (and the mothers behind it) can transform the way a neighbourhood sees itself and navigates its challenges.

Sources we plan to use:

1. Ridgley et al. (2008). Regent Park Youth Health Action Project Research Report, 1-27.

2. Ranko Media. (2025, September 16). Toronto crime rate by neighbourhood. Protection Plus. http://protectionplus.ca/resources/blog/toronto-crime-rate-by-neighbourhood/

3. Westoll, N. (2023, September 16). Regent Park organization works to build community spirit, help gun violence victims. CityNews Toronto.https://toronto.citynews.ca/2023/09/15/regent-park-organization-works-to-build-community-spirit-help-gun-violence-victims/

4. Brockbank, N. (2020, December 17). Regent Park, St. Jamestown residents allege Toronto police robbed them during raids: study. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-police-raid-study-1.5836353

The team members of Yellow Brick Road are Lexie Young, Renee Chiu, Alpha Vu, Makita Depradine and Ali Joya.

Cameras Rolling and Looking Forward

After this week’s tutorial, and with Professor Aditi’s advice on how we had to make sure there are relations between the people we chose to interview, our team became concerned about our research question because we felt we weren’t in line with our research question anymore. Although parents were willing to be interviewed, many were hesitant for us to interview their children.  

In addition to our interviews, the person who was going to talk with us this past class (03/19) did not show up. Our team decided it was best for us to take this time and capture more footage and b-roll for our documentary. It was a great experience bonding with our team, laughing at how we should capture bits, just enjoying the weather and the sunset. 

Renee’s thoughts during this week’s progress: 

“Though I was a little disappointed that we couldn’t get our interview, I think it was great that our team got to have time for ourselves and really sit down and brainstorm what works best with us. It was also nice visiting the playground across from Daniels Spectrum and having Lexie take clean cinematic shots of the area. I’m really excited about how our documentary is going to be!  ”

As we continue with this project, our current plan is to reschedule with the person we were going to interview this week, and see if they are also a part of Mothers of Peace Regent Park (MOPRP), and try our best to contact the founder of MOPRP once we are certain of the topic change, going from how parents and children perceive the downtown east area, into perhaps, how mothers or women in general in Regent Park find a sense of community and safety? Furthermore, we are excited to finally have an interview with a student who lives in Regent Park and is able to give us a perspective of this neighbourhood from someone close to our age. We also might look into the Children’s Book Library at Daniels Spectrum, as recommended by Adonis. 

From Lexie on MOPRP:  

“As of today (Tuesday, March 24th), we have reached out to Sureya Ibrahim, the founder and leader of MOPRP. We’re currently looking at having an interview with her sometime this weekend or during class. I’m incredibly excited, and think this will be the best thing for our documentary, as I do not believe our current research question will last much longer. ”

This week has been mostly trying to decide how we want to approach our documentary, as well as starting to gather data and literature for the final article. As we collect more footage, this upcoming week will be a shift in focus to planning out the final article and beginning writing. Despite the setbacks this week, our team is beginning to find clarity in both our direction and our purpose. By adapting our research focus and continuing to build connections within the community, we are shaping a documentary that feels both more feasible and more meaningful. As we move forward with new interviews and ideas, we’re excited to see how these shifts will strengthen our project and the stories we aim to tell. 

The team members of Yellow Brick Road are Lexie Young, Renee Chiu, Alpha Vu, Makita Depradine and Ali Joya.

Behind the Camera: Our First Week of Filming

This week, our group continued developing the foundation for the documentary, which in large part has been informed by the first interview we have been able to conduct. In reaching our overall goal of exploring perceptions of safety in Regent Park through the experiences of both parents and their children, we feel that we have taken a huge step forward.

From Lexie (on conducting an interview):

“I couldn’t tell if our interviewee or I was more nervous. Probably her… Probably.”

We also conducted our first interview with a mother from the community, which marked an important step in beginning the production process. The interview gave us an opportunity to practice using the cameras and microphones while learning how to structure and adapt our interview questions to generate real conversations. We began identifying which questions encouraged more detailed and reflective responses and which ones needed to be adjusted. It also helped us recognize practical considerations such as sound quality, camera positioning, and how to create a comfortable environment for participants.

From Lexie (on camera angles):

“I couldn’t find an angle I liked, everything felt too sterile. In the coming weeks, I want to keep experimenting, but we may be limited by the first interview footage in terms of keeping consistency.”

From Renee (capturing audio and camera works):

“After letting the excitement and nervousness settle in, I became really aware of what was happening in the recording studio. Of course, the audio was nice and clear, but the thought that maybe our interviewee was a bit nervous got to me. I started wondering, maybe we could have given all of us more time to bond and perhaps meet up with her somewhere outside of the recording studio, so it doesn’t feel so head-on (?). I did catch myself feeling the need to nod or smile here and there, reminding myself to be human, because although my full focus was on the camera and listening carefully to the audio, our interviewee was sharing something personal, and they are just as shy or nervous, so acknowledging what is being shared might allow them to feel more comfortable and heard, as well as, this was a chance for us to understand a small fraction of the people in this neighbourhood.”

As we continue this project, we hope that in the coming week our group will do a better job of allocating our workloads and identify additional tasks for members while interviews are underway. This could be video editing, capturing b-roll, or doing research.

After the interview, our interviewee informed us that a friend of hers might potentially agree to be interviewed, which was a relief for our group, as time is running out and we are still at an early stage of the project.

Then after briefing with the professor about our first interview, she surprised us by offering to connect our group to the founder of the Mothers for Peace group that Adriana mentioned was a member.

From Alpha (note taker):

“Because this was our first “serious” week, having an actual interviewee and all, some of us kind of found ourselves in a situation where we didn’t know what to do and what role we should take up for the day. In the end, all five of our group members just cramped into the studio”

For next week, we will be dividing our roles, such as having a group for the interview and the other will be scouting for outdoor footage.

The team members of Yellow Brick Road are Lexie Young, Renee Chiu, Alpha Vu, Makita Depradine and Ali Joya.

Asking the Right Questions

This week, our group began conducting preliminary research to further understand the neighbourhood issue. During our group discussion, we realized that we did not want to imply that the neighbourhood is dangerous, as historically, Regent Park has been associated with poverty and crime in Toronto by media outlets.  

As the large-scale redevelopment projects have significantly transformed the neighbourhood’s landscape and population, our interviews should focus more on the perceptions of the everyday experiences families have. To support this, we plan to look up crime statistics, media healthlines, historical accounts of Regent Park’s redevelopment, and potentially attend the safety meetings held by the Regent Park Social Development Plan (RDSDP), as mentioned by Adonis. 

As of now, our research question remains the same: how do parents and children in Regent Park (or the downtown east) differ in their perceptions of safety and navigation within the neighbourhood, and what does this reveal about the downtown east identity? Again, we wish to have the question not sound as opinionated or targeted, and want to know people’s perspectives at first glance or experience here.  

Our project will take the form of a short-form, interview-driven documentary. It will primarily feature interviews with parents, while also (hopefully) incorporating perspectives from their children when it is appropriate and ethical. Alongside these interviews, we will add other visual footage of the neighbourhood, such as parks, streets, playgrounds, or community spaces. We feel that keeping the documentary interview-heavy will center the perspectives of the residents we choose to interview, and that it will keep our research on the right track. 

Moving forward, our production plan will be focused on transcribing these conceptual goals into a tangible piece of media. We will collect data by navigating demographic data to see how the neighbourhood’s safety profile has shifted since the redevelopment. Additionally, we discussed attending the next RPSDP Safety Working Group meeting to listen to current residents and their concerns to help us refine our interview scripts.  

As our project will be interview-heavy, our primary goal is to secure a solid group of voices. We are prioritizing identifying families who have lived in Regent Park through different stages of redevelopment to capture an in-depth perception of the change. When interviewing children, we have decided to keep them off-camera or use creative framing (such as filming their toys or their parents) to protect their privacy while ensuring their voices are central to the narrative.  

To avoid any technical issues during production, we have established a plan where we will not use a single device for both audio and video. As advised by the production team at FOCUS, we will use at least two devices, one to document and the other as a mic for a higher-quality audio.  

Regarding our filming locations, we are debating between the intimacy of home-based interviews and the visual of Daniels Spectrum. We would like to capture film of everyday life in the downtown east area, as tools to cement our research question within the neighbourhood and community. 

In moving forward with this project, it is essential that the voices of community members remain at the center of our work. Rather than relying solely on statistics or outside interpretations, listening to the everyday experiences of families in Regent Park allows for a more nuanced understanding of how people actually live, move through, and relate to the neighbourhood. We want this documentary to center residents’ own knowledge of their community, which ensures that conversations about Regent Park are shaped by the people who live there. 

The team members of Yellow Brick Road are Lexie Young, Renee Chiu, Alpha Vu, Makita Depradine and Ali Joya.

Yellow Brick Road

In this week’s group session, we created a team name— Yellow Brick Road. Here’s a brief introduction about each of our members: 

“Hi, I’m Renee, a fourth-year student at the University of Toronto, double-majoring in Book and Media Studies, and Urban Studies. I’ll be contributing through writing and coordination, helping guide the research direction, taking interview notes, and narrative development.”

“Hi, I’m Lexie. I’m a fourth-year student at UofT double majoring in Human Geography and Urban Studies (and a minor in Sociology!). I’m contributing to the project via editing and contributing to research.”

“I work in the City Planning Division at the City of Toronto and I was interested in the topic of children and parents in Regent Park, because I believe that the well-being of children and parents reflects the peace and overall health of a community.”

“Hello, I’m Alpha, a fourth year student majoring in Sociology, and will be applying for a major in Urban Studies this April. My interest in this project primarily focuses on the differing perceptions of the revitalization of Regent Park between parents and their children. For this project, I will help film and compile the research into a piece of media that provides insight into the identity of Regent Park. ”

“Makita is a resident of Regent Park, and her input as a mother, worker, and student in the area will be vital for the production of our documentary. She brings to the team a strong interest in the relationships between parents and children within the context of Regent Park, alongside her personal input on the experience of residents in Regent Park. (Written by Lexie)”

Together, we came together to address some shared concerns and interests we have on the redevelopment of Regent Park. Our group discussed perceptions of safety around the area, inviting residents of Regent Park (in our group) to share their perspectives. We talked about spaces that tend to feel busier or more active at certain times, or parts of the neighbourhood where parents feel unsafe letting their children go unsupervised.  

We touched upon the differing generational perceptions of the revitalization and identity of Regent Park. We wonder whether younger generations feel different about the change than their parents–or even grandparents–do. In speaking with Makita, she reflected upon how the differences in experience can even vary by just a few years. She compared her children, and their experiences in the neighborhood, noting that even within the same family, experiences were not uniform. Navigating the neighborhood is something that cannot be defined by one person's experience, and in the coming weeks we want to try and get as many perspectives as possible to give several answers to our research question.  

Something successful during this week’s session was narrowing down our focus with the help of Professor Aditi. Rather than broadly discussing redevelopment in Regent Park and how it affected different generations of people, we began centering our topic and ended up with the research question being, what are the differences between the perceptions of safety between parents and children of Regent Park? We also generated some strong visual ideas for the upcoming documentary, such as starting off the film with children playing in a supervised playground, incorporating a “slice of life” style.  

One challenge that occurred was defining “downtown east identity” in a way where it feels specific and meaningful and makes sense to our research question. During our group discussion, we talked about how Regent Park has historically been stigmatized, and how perceptions of safety, specifically from outsiders, may differ from residents lived experiences. For instance, when Ali mentioned that prior to moving to Regent Park a year ago, he was warned that the area used to be dangerous 5-10 years ago. Yet compared to his current experience, it has not matched that narrative, in doing so, this raised important questions about how reputation, history, and media shapes identity.  

So far, this experience has allowed us to be more attentive to everyday spatial practices. As a child may see a park as a place to play, a parent might be cautious or attentive to nearby streets as risk zones. These subtle differences reveal much about belonging, as well as generational change in a redeveloping neighbourhood. Overall, we are very excited about the documentary potential of visualizing routes, the interviews, and hopefully having the area be more understood by the media.  

The team members of Yellow Brick Road are Lexie Young, Renee Chiu, Alpha Vu, Makita Depradine and Ali Joya.