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Acting for change
Last Updated: 30th August 2009, 3:48am
The crowd of nearly 500 inside the Capitol Theatre shushes as Amiga Taylor performs a spoken word piece on an impromptu runway.
"Increase the peace in our streets and set us free from the anarchy," she repeatedly says.
Taylor is one of the roughly 50 performers at the Poetic Fashion event -- a community initiative that builds bridges between youth living in Toronto's 13 priority neighbourhoods.
Watching nearby, "Foots," a 26-year-old hip-hop artist from the east end of the city, says initiatives like these give youth hope for the future.
"In the 'hood, there's only basketball or becoming an entertainer to get me out of the hell," he said. "Within urban neighbourhoods, that's all they think about.
"The first thing they pick up is a basketball, the second is a mic," he said. "If they don't invest in them, they're going to become future criminals."
Events similar to Poetic Fashion are happening across the city. And they are indirectly helping to bring down violence in these 13 priority neighbourhoods.
However, Foots said pinpointing the 13 neighbourhoods is doing more harm than good. It doesn't address the "many more" areas that are going through the struggle, he said.
The stats, he said, can be deceiving because crime can shift from gun violence to petty crime.
"Crime is not down, it's a cycle, it continues (and with naming neighbourhoods), you're labelling people and people don't want to be labelled," he said.
To create a more "tangible" connection between youth and the cops, the Toronto Police created the Youth in Policing Initiative (YIPI), an eight-week program that puts youth aged 14 to 17 living in these priority neighbourhoods to work with police, mainly doing clerical work.
But the program also enhances the link between police and the neighbourhoods by getting youth involved, said YIPI program co-ordinator Danielle Francis.
"The police isn't this bizarre entity that nobody understands and is faceless," she said. "It's making a huge impact. We hear from parents and how their kids have matured and they talk to other parents and say, 'You've got to get your kids in this program.' "
This year, the numbers of youth participants in the program grew by 50 to 150 and two other areas -- Regent Park and South Parkdale -- were added to the list.
While Francis said she can't cite a direct correlation between YIPI and crime stats decreasing, she feels it's having a strong impact.
"They said the student unemployment rate was 29%. Young people just need an opportunity to have meaningful work so they can start to build up their skills and be ready to hit the ground running," she said.
The Mixed Theatre Company is also trying to break the cycle of violence by getting youth gangs off the street and onto the stage. The company is working with Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) to help recruit students and former gang members to create a theatrical production on gang issues.
Youth perform raps based on their experiences with violence while a DJ spins live beats throughout the show. The play presents the worst-case scenarios of gang involvement, catalysing audience members to express their voices, making our communities safer.
"For real change to happen, there has to be a buy-in from the community and to show that these types of (violent) behaviours aren't accepted," said Duncan McCallum, associate director of DISS, the interactive play that ran at York Memorial Collegiate earlier this month.
"As soon as a dialogue begins between police and the community and the youth, everyone becomes empathetic to where each other stands and action plans can be created."
Jane-Finch On the Move, a grassroots committee made up of various community residents as well as non-residents, is dedicated towards improving the living standards within the Jane-Finch community.
"You have to inspire hope in communities and we're trying innovative ways to change the perception of the area," said JFOM chairman Angelo Furlan.
"It's pretty grim that there are 13 communities that are suffering from the same thing."
jenny.yuen@sunmedia.ca
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