It is difficult to evaluate, not only because of the range of experiences among youth, but because our society offers so few venues for young people's voices to be heard. Children are often expected to be passive recipients of information rather than active participants in creating their own lives. Even at this forum, youth are noticeably absent. Like the Harry Potter movie, its critique is packaged, delivered, sold and paid for by adults. The setting for the discussion is also ironic: on the sidewalk outside the studio, young people often gather to press their noses against the windows, submissively eager to catch a glimpse of pop-star idols on MuchMusic.

In this city where infotainment and consumer culture reign, where Canada's major media conglomerates have headquarters, where Marshall McLuhan spawned a generation of pop-culture junkies and media critics, where rich kids are a "market" and poor kids are a "problem," two unique programs give youth the opportunity to create media of their own. At Globalhood's "Digital Playground" and Regent Park's "Media Arts Program" the kids are doing it for themselves, developing a new way to effect media literacy, youth empowerment and social change.

Globalhood

John Sobol, co-founder of Globalhood, steers me through the rooms of a spacious warehouse near trendy Queen Street West. "We've only been at this location for a year and a half," Sobol explains. "Before that we were further south, on Liberty Street." The Liberty Street area is largely a warehouse and industrial zone. At that time, Globalhood was known as the Playground, a "digital adventure centre" for at-risk youth that worked with more than 30 Toronto-based community groups between 1999 and 2001. Funded by a grant from Human Resources Development Canada, the Playground was created to give at-risk youth the opportunity to play with digital tools in a collaborative context. "A lot of these kids are vulnerable, have low self-esteem and are afraid to be creative, to try new things where people might see them fail," says Sobol. "We tried to set up an environment where it's safe for them to explore their creativity. They're very excited to discover that they do know things, that they do have stories to tell."

Using video and Super-8 cameras, non-linear digital editing, digital and analog sound recording equipment and imagination, young people on weeklong "digital adventures" worked collaboratively to create a visual or audio media project reflecting their experiences. "It's not about teaching them how to use gear," Sobol emphasizes. "It's about teaching them how to tell stories. We spend most of our time getting kids to imagine the most meaningful stories they can. They do everything: write, direct, shoot and act. Our role is just to support them in being as inspired and strong as they can be."

For Sobol, digital technology is crucial to that process. "Digital technology is creating a distinct culture with distinct values, and young people are most attuned to that culture and those values, even if they don't have a computer. They gravitate naturally toward using those tools -- when they get them -- in ways that are adventurous and fruitful. They're not hung up on preconceptions about narrative and form. They want a voice, and this tool gives them a voice, as long as they can tap into their own stories."

"I don't think that simply having access to equipment gets you very far," Sobol is quick to add. "You have to have conceptual tools and a human reason to use the stuff. Collaboration and storytelling are the two things that we focus on. Our goal is that encounters with Globalhood are always transformative experiences. We want to blow minds and nurture souls, open young people up to new experiences and ground them in their creative selves."

The results are deeply personal explorations of the issues and experiences young people face. "Until Everyone Meets," a video produced with the YWCA, uses a creative combination of personal interviews and visual collage to show how young women deal with racism and body image. "The Urban Reserve," a video produced with the Native Youth Workers' Network, gives viewers a glimpse into the lives of half-a-dozen young native people in Toronto, and also addresses the issues of identity and self-esteem. While production quality sometimes reveals the time constraints of the "digital adventure" model, the stories being told reveal vibrant youth cultures using media to promote social change and self-expression.

In the last year, Globalhood has grown out of the Playground to provide a range of other commercial and community-access services, including a digital media program for seniors and consulting work for businesses and schools. "We've evolved," says Sobol. "We've been trying to become a self-sustaining organization with commercial services for those who can pay and community access for those who can't." The digital Playground remains an important component of Globalhood's programs, and Sobol believes that it is unique in Canada. "There's a variety of other projects that give access to gear to youth, some of which provide mentoring and training. I don't know of any other program that has the same ambitions as we do. Most work with specific communities, whereas we are a service provider to all sorts of communities."

"I hope we're helping people to grow stronger and deeper," Sobol concludes. "But we haven't been around long enough, and the technology hasn't been around long enough, to predict what will happen in the long term."

Regent Park Focus

The Regent Park Family Drop-In Centre is located just east of downtown in the heart of one of Toronto's low-income communities. Here, in a windowless basement lit by flourescent bulbs and decorated with black-and-white photos and secondhand furniture, Adonis Huggins works to co-ordinate the Regent Park Focus Media Arts Program. The program has been running for more than ten years, in which time it has grown from a substance-abuse prevention program incorporating video into a multi-media resource that gives youth the chance to create Super-8 films, video documentaries, broadcast radio, audio art, a website and a community newspaper. Under the mandate of the Regent Park Focus Community Coalition against Substance Abuse, the program is supported by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and the Ontario Ministry of Health.

"Basically, the original idea was to do grassroots community prevention work," Huggins explains. "We were trying to figure out how to engage youth. We decided, instead of us coming to them with information, to give them the tools they need to find that information for themselves. So, in 1993, after stumbling for a few years, we started these drug-awareness video clubs. We'd bring information and video cameras, and ask kids to create skits around the information. What was neat was that, even though these videos were terrible, they wanted to show them to their class and stuff. So we started investing more time learning and teaching video skills."

Since then, emphasis has shifted from drug awareness to all aspects of community health and well being. According to its website, the program "seeks to use media technology as a tool for change, stimulating discussion, information sharing, awareness and action" on a range of issues raised by young people. "Everything is based on the same philosophy," Huggins says. "Youth identify their concerns; we provide skills and equipment to create something out of that."

Like Sobol, Huggins believes that "it's most important that we focus on the process and not the product. What we emphasize is storytelling." Similarly, in most cases, "youth work as a collective, so there's always compromise." But there are exceptions. "The video projects required young people to work with a team and with the community," Huggins explains. "Some youth wanted to work on their own visions, but we didn't have the equipment and resources for people to work as individuals. We wanted opportunities for youth to create projects for themselves, so we came up with Super-8 film work, where there's no editing."

The Super-8 program has achieved some beautiful results, ranging from a short visual collage about basketball and the urban environment to a hilarious narrative called "Armageddon," where a child's smelly feet spell doom for the earth. In contrast, the video projects are more elaborate and politically charged, dealing with issues like substance abuse, the intersections of poverty, racism and violence, youth culture and the role of the community in shaping its own future. Production quality reveals the tremendous effort and time that have gone into the creation of these works, while the themes addressed reflect a community orientation that differs significantly from the deeply personal material emerging from Globalhood's "digital adventures."

"What's good about our program is that it grew out of the community," argues Huggins. "Really, the media is a tool to get to where we want in terms of community empowerment and youth empowerment." In his view, the youth-produced community newspaper, Catch Da Flava, is one of the most significant contributions made by the Media Arts Program. "The newspaper is important because people tend to view Regent Park as powerless, as poor, never as active players, people who have opinions and are able to articulate them. The community is often taking its own initiative and that's not usually acknowledged in the outside media. Having a community newspaper helps to change that." More importantly, the newspaper gives youth "an opportunity to feel empowered around political and social issues. So many young people feel voiceless."

While the program is rooted in its community, it has attracted youth from all parts of the city. "It's free for anybody, really," says Huggins. "The original purpose was to empower Regent Park residents, but now we're about 50-50 with young people from outside the community." Huggins believes that "more communities should be contemplating non-recreational ways to engage youth. In a lot of cases, people will set up a couple of basketball hoops and think that they're meeting the needs of young people. I disagree with that. Young people don't just have physical needs; they have mental and emotional needs, too. I think we meet those. We could do it better, but hopefully we'll inspire more communities to do that.

There are barriers in terms of resources, as we've discovered. But in time," Huggins says, "I think there will be more programs like this."

Youth Media: More than Just Pop

Both Globalhood and Regent Park Focus reveal that youth culture is more than Harry Potter and Britney Spears, and that youth values encompass more than pop stars, T.V. and Toys'R'Us. By engaging young people in the creation of their own videos, music and writing, these programs not only provide youth with valuable technical skills but empower them to make their voices heard, to become engaged in their communities and to understand media more critically. In a "digital age," where information has become a commodity and media is the chief tool of communication, encouraging youth to reclaim technology and express their views to create their own media has perhaps never been more important.

Kristiana Clemens is a freelance writer, broadcaster, zine machine and media activist. She is currently plotting her escape from Toronto. If you have an effective strategy to share, e-mail her at klc@radio.fm.