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Amplifying the Muslim Identity: Dr. Aditi Mehta's Collaborative Journey in Regent Park
Written by: Lawrence Rodriguez
Lawrence Rodriguez is a youth journalist for FOCUS Media Art Centre
On May 9th, 2024, Dr. Aditi Mehta, an Assistant Professor for the Urban Studies Program at the University of Toronto, held a presentation to discuss an often overlooked element of Regent Park's culture, the Muslim community. Dr. Aditi Mehta tells her story of how she collaborated with communities and organizations in a project to explore and amplify the Muslim identity of the Regent Park community.
Dr. Aditi Mehta talks about a brief history of Regent Park, and the stigmas surrounding it. She goes on to examine how people lose out on job opportunities. This is because their address is located within Regent Park. To combat this, she sought to de-stigmatize it by educating reporters about other aspects of Regent Park and taking control of the neighbourhood's narrative. Educating not only individuals outside of Regent Park, residents of the neighbourhood were taught how to fight back against offensive or negative reporting aimed at the community of Regent Park.
As Dr. Aditi Mehta went on, she also talked about her collaborations with local communities within Regent Park, such as FOCUS Media Arts, and the Diva Girls in collaboration with the University of Toronto. Working with FOCUS Media Arts, she collaborated with them to leverage the power of media, helping to effectively communicate her message to the local community. The Diva Girls, a group of young women ranging from the ages of 12 to 17 from Regent Park, and the University of Toronto collaborated in a joint project aimed at exploring identity using media in Regent Park. As a result of this collaboration, they created a video about their personal experiences with identifying as both Muslim and Canadian, dubbed “in-betweenness”, an interaction between the two cultures.
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FOCUS Media Arts Centre (FOCUS) is a not-for-profit organization that was established in 1990 to counter negative media stereotypes of low income communities and provide relevant information to residents living in the Regent Park area and surrounding communities.
We seek to empower marginalized individuals and under represented communities to have a voice, through the use of professional training, mentorships and participatory based media practices that enable the sharing of stories, experiences and perspectives on relevant matters and issues. In brief our mandate is to empower marginalized individuals and under-serviced communities to have a voice and tell their own stories.
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