community engagement – Exhibit Change

Wrapping up LandMark

Posted on October 28, 2014October 28, 2014 by Jenn Chan

It is hard to believe that a little less than a month ago, we stayed up all night in St. James Park for LandMark. This project was an unbelievable triumph of community partnerships and stories.

In February, we submitted a proposal for a Scotiabank Nuit Blanche independent project following a few conversations with the St. Lawrence Market Neighbourhood BIA. The idea for LandMark was born out of a goal to capture stories and bridge together different community organizations from the neighbourhood to complete one goal.

We specifically chose St. James Park as the site for our proposal, as it is a site rich with history and controversy. It is well known as the site of the Occupy Toronto protest and demonstration in 2011, the site of the St. James Cathedral which is the first church in the city of York and where you can still take bell-ringing classes, and now it is home to Music in the St. James Park where you can enjoy free concerts in the park on Thursdays throughout the summer. We knew this was a park of many layers and it was those layers that inspired the theme of LandMark.

To uncover the city, layer by layer.

This theme alongside the curatorial mission to capture the stories of everyday heroes, LandMark emerged as a one-time event that can only be created by these partners at this time.

What is remarkable about this project, is that each of the partners were like a moving piece of well-oiled machine, without each other, this project would never have come to life in the way that it did. Much like a community, we are a series of individual pieces that can operate separately, but collectively can accomplish larger goals without taking on the entire workload individually.

It is our goal to take what we have learned from LandMark and put it into longer and continuous community partnership projects in the St. Lawrence Market Neighbourhood and strengthen the foundation that has been built.

Behind the Scenes of LandMark: Uncovering Isorine Marc & Jamii

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Colin Lacey

LandMark was a month-long community engagement project that Exhibit Change ran in partnership with the St. Lawrence Market Neighbourhood BIA.

Involving over 40 partnerships is make it a reality, one of the key elements of the project was the matching of our team of photographers with local organizations in order to highlight how these community projects are helping to make Toronto a great city to live in.

Our LandMark photographer Diana Nazareth interviewed her community partner Isorine Marc, who is the founder of Jamii, to uncover the story that would be translated into the photo essay for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche.

Tell us about your mission? What was the inspiration for your idea/company/project?

In 2008, some of my neighbors and I came together to organize in The Esplanade neighborhood a few small but meaningful grassroots community activities throughout the summer days. Events ranged from outdoor barbecue to gardening, including bike clinics, movie nights and a mini arts festival. Within a couple of months, the change was obvious: after thirty years of living next to each other, neighbors started living with each other. This is the very core of Jamii’s inspiration.

I believe in one’s creativity; I believe in the power of arts to build our community stronger; I believe in people taking ownership of their public space; and I believe in the importance of nurturing a sense of pride of and belonging to the place where we live.

I founded Jamii in 2011. Jamii’s mandate is to enhance The Esplanade neighborhood’s vitality by initiating and producing arts-based community-engaged projects and events in and around Crombie Park.

The success of Jamii is not only in its vision, but also in the people and organizations that support it. The list is long, but it’s important for me to mention one of our greatest partner, CORPUS, the dance/theatre company I work for. It’s been a decade of taking arts to the street throughout the world. CORPUS has been supporting and partnering with Jamii – since the very beginning, to transform The esplanade with creativity.

The echoing of “change comes from within” resonates on The Esplanade. I’ve been living here since 2006, and I love my “village” – as I call it. The people I work with, engage with, partner with are my neighbors, friends, daughter’s friends, classmates, teachers (…). It ‘s not an outside force that comes in our homes to bring change: it’s us, Esplanadians, who create our tomorrow.

How would you describe yourself in 10 words or less?

Passionate, engaged, happy, social, driven, enthusiast, hard-working, persevering, focused, generous and loving. That’s 11.

What is most sacred to you?

As of today: my 2-yrs old daughter. She needs my love and guidance.

Who or what is a current influential force in your life?

The excitement burning in me when thinking of what’s possible.
The discipline to see things through.

What was the hardest part of growing up for you?

I can’t think of any: all was happening to get me all set for what was coming. What I love is continue growing up and getting ready for what’s always ahead.

What advice can you offer to young women with GOOD ideas today?

Trust that you’re capable and don’t think about it twice: just do it.

Where will you be in 5 years? What will your ‘mission’ look like?

I don’t know where I will be, maybe here – maybe there; but I know it will be nice and I’ll feel good about myself, about my life.
I hope that The Esplanade neighborhood will be thriving and as creative as ever, under the leadership of Jamii; and if not under its leadership, I hope that Jamii’s legacy will be in the air, one way or the other.

Where can we find out more about your project?

www.jamiiesplanade.org

Behind the Scenes of LandMark: Tara Noelle & Young People’s Theatre

Posted on October 6, 2014October 7, 2014 by Colin Lacey

LandMark was a month-long community engagement project that Exhibit Change ran in partnership with the St. Lawrence Market Neighbourhood BIA.

We interviewed Product Magazine photographer Tara Noelle about her experience in photographing the volunteers at Young People’s Theatre.

What’s your background and why photography?

I am a local based portrait photographer who studied Fine Arts and Film Photography at OCADU. I stepped away from mix media art work to focus more solely on photography as a medium and career.

I enjoy that a great photo can suggest many emotions regardless of their subject, in a way suggesting everything while revealing nothing. Why photography? I could be here forever… there are so many why’s, so why not?

Tell us about what inspired you after meeting up with your community partner?

Where to begin? While exploring the space, I was impressed by the quality of the in-house custom designers, and who could forget the story about how the large stage is supposedly haunted? However, what soon became clear to me was that the strength of Young People’s Theatre is truly the young teenage volunteers who bring YPT to life.

What was the concept that guided the creation of your Scotiabank Nuit Blanche photo essay?

I wanted to try convey as much as possible about the people behind the scenes of YPT in one photo but still keep my minimalist portrait style in mind.

Connect with Tara: taranoelle.ca | Facebook: Tara Noelle Photography | Twitter:@taranoellephoto | Instagram: @taranoellephoto

TUF Stuff: An Afternoon with the Toronto Urban Fellows

Posted on March 21, 2014September 3, 2014 by Colin Lacey

On March 20th Exhibit Change spent the afternoon engaging with a great network of passionate change makers and professionals who really do want to move the City of Toronto in a positive direction. This amazing group is none other than the Toronto Urban Fellows.

The Toronto Urban Fellows is an innovative program that has engaged 58 professionals to date in an intensive training of what it takes to run Canada’s largest city with respect to governance, operations and administration.

Balancing full-time work and various seminars, we were honoured to be invited to meet with the group to explore at a high level the value of the design thinking process.

Delivering one of our rapid fire workshops, we helped the Fellows to scratch the surface of how to challenge assumptions and making space to focus on the problem definition phase. The workshop was intentionally structured to highlight the value of avoiding our natural tendency to jump into the solutions we already know before we truly understand the people who will end up using these services.

The Toronto Urban Fellows demonstrated great energy and dove right into the workshop’s contents and concepts. It was an inspiring afternoon to say the least!

Engagement in a Ball Pit

Posted on December 19, 2013September 3, 2014 by Colin Lacey

This summer the Exhibit Change team got really excited to throw a ball pit event. Yes, you read that correctly. An event with a ball pit. Why? Well, where to begin…

If you live anywhere in Toronto, it would almost be impossible to have never seen the development proposal white boards announcing a potential new development project and spelling out details for upcoming community consultation meetings.

If you have ever dared to venture into one of these community consultation meetings, it is arguably an alienating experience that is a mix of posturing and politics set up in a conference room somewhere. You will soon discover that any opportunity to participate in the decision making process in your neighbourhood has been diminished to reading presentation slides and filling out feedback forms.

Which begs the question: why is the standard for community consultation in Toronto not anywhere close to authentic engagement?

Community engagement is a catchy phrase to throw around, and at its essence requires a culture where citizens have greater decision making powers beyond the occasional opportunity to cast a vote. If we, as a city, want community engagement then we very much need to start building this culture of participation.

So how do we begin to create a culture of community engagement? We at Exhibit Change decided that it might start with a ball pit.

If we want to build a culture of citizen participation, we need to start learning who we share this community with on a daily basis. Which, naturally, is uncomfortable. We all have our circle of family, friends and co-workers, but when it comes to the people we share a building with, wait at the same TTC stop every morning, or buy vegetables at the same market, it’s easier to keep a distance.

The Ball Pit project seeks to challenge that, if only for an afternoon. For our first event, we set up shop in a park and asked perfect strangers to jump into the pit and to start a conversation with someone they have never met. Sounds challenging? At first, yes. But the results were amazing.

As with our other work in design-driven community engagement, we know that true learning begins once you get people a little uncomfortable and then helping them move beyond that. On that sunny summer Saturday, we met enterprising cheese salesmen who connected with a stranger in ball pit about growing up in New Brunswick. Another set of strangers talked in length about whether coyotes were cool animals to have in the city or a real problem. Most people we met call Toronto their second home.

As we explore this new venture, we want to give props to the Soul Pancake team who inspired us to do something awesome with a ball pit. Thanks!

A Reflection on Design Lab 1 with GEM…

Posted on December 16, 2013September 3, 2014 by Jenn Chan

Just over a year ago I met Rochelle, the Founder and Executive Director of Girls E-Mentoring (GEM) and we started a discussion about what the GEM program would look like. After an initial conversation about what mentorship looked like and how it might look like for GEM, I posed a question about what GEM might look like if the girls who would ultimately be in the program designed it?

And so we begin…

“GEM’s mission is to mitigate the adverse effects of poverty through electronic mentorship. Our vision is to bridge a social divide between at-risk girls and high-achieving women to motivate the next generation of leaders, innovators and mothers to reach their full potential no matter where they started. “

It all starts with empathy.

We hosted our first Design Lab with 18 girls at the Flemingdon Neighbourhood Services. This was our second time meeting the girls, but the first time we were really digging into figuring out what GEM might be. We spent a short amount of time doing a lot of work. The goal for first phase of the design process is to learn more about the people at the centre of GEM.

Design Lab 1 was intended to start exploring what the girls are interested in, know more about personalities in the room, aspirations and specifically pains and gains in the immediate and long term. Following the Design Lab, we met with GEM’s Advisors to further dive into some of the themes that are coming up and were met with some design challenges coming from the perspectives of mentees and potential mentors. This is a great reminder of why we are actually doing this. The design process is revealing the elements that we need to spend more time thinking about.

Moving forward from Design Lab 1 and the Advisors’ meeting, we will be spending time unpacking all the insights and trying to gain clarity moving into Design Lab 2 in February.

All this to say, we are still learning and that is why this is so much fun!