Bad Kid

Posted on by Jenn Chan

As EdCamp Toronto planning is moving along, and at each meeting, I feel like when I crinkle my nose or ask just one more question, that I am starting to be thought of as the bad kid. Which has got me thinking, maybe I am a bad kid. I didn’t do well in school, I struggled to understand why I was doing yet another formula that seemed so unrelated to my future work and always had the lingering statement of “Jennifer is nice to have in class, but she talks too much” on every one of my report cards, dating back to first grade.

EdCamp Toronto planning has taught me that as the bad kid, I want to learn too.

Over the last week, I have seen and read several anecdotes that have intrigued me to start thinking about my relationship to being a learner. Are we aiming to get our education system to be a place where every student is testing at 100% ? Are we accepting classroom sizes will always be too big? Are we teaching for the students who are getting it or the students who are struggling?

I am curious to see how EdCamp will go and the conversations that will happen and the connections that will be made. I want to be part of the conversation that gets us to the next level of thinking.

Who is giving out the gold stars of the future? What do they even look like?

Inspire Yourself!

Jenn

Day 3

Posted on by Jenn Chan

To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it more fit for its prime function of looking forward.  -Margaret Fairless Barber

The day three theme for our Through My Lens photography adventure is:

Where do you see change taking place?

Send in your photos to our Flickr page, Facebook page or email us.

This is why we do it…

Posted on by Jenn Chan

Exhibit Change is leading Through My Lens as a project to get to know what people are paying attention to in the city. We created Through My Lens as a way to get people to take a second look at what is around them. We often get settled into a routine and lose track of what else is going on around us, the 10 themes for Through My Lens are curated to encourage you to look again. There are over 100 photographers participating in Through My Lens, so we are expecting to see a lot of amazing pictures and capture a lot of stories. The images from Through My Lens will be available to visitors at our Nuit Blanche exhibit to curate onto our rental truck. It is going to be a spectacular visual statement as to what the city is focusing on and what the community is saying. Inside the rental truck, there will be a cardboard cityscape as a backdrop to more conversation and an interactive photo-shoot.  Through My Lens is a photography project on the outside, but for us it is a way to use a creative tool to get people into discussion about the city.

Through My Lens is a 10 day, city focused, themed photography adventure with 4 neighbourhood walking tours. Each neighbourhood walking tour is intended to inspire our photographers to explore, capture and share what our city has to offer. On September 7, we kicked off Through My Lens with a walking tour in the Junction. We walked for 2 hours and took many pictures. On September 10, we will be heading to Jane and Finch and discovering the environmental side of the neighbourhood. On September 11, we will be walking through the history of the design and people of social housing on the East End of Toronto. And our last walking tour will be on September 14, from Grange Park to Jane Jacob’s house in the Annex.

Exhibit Change is a design driven community engagement organization. All of our projects use design and play to engage citizens into community conversations. We visual our projects lending itself to be a platform for people to be creative, design and make positive action. Sometimes our materials are play-doh, lego and pipe cleaners, this time it is photography, but every time we do a project we do it to build community ownership.

Through My Lens is a collaboration project with Exhibit Change, Toronto Urban Exchange and Hello-Foto.