A photo exhibition is worth a thousand studies. That’s the message behind the latest project from the Wellesley Institute’s St. James Town Initiative, called Visual Voices: Neighbourhood and Health. The project put cameras in the hands of 27 St James Town residents and visitors and let them capture whatever strikes them about their east end neighbourhood — a popular destination for recent immigrants and home to a high concentration of low-income families.

The images, which will be on display in the rotunda at City Hall until tomorrow (and some of which can be seen on the Initiative’s website), depict the parts of St James Town most of us only hear about during affordable housing protests and through police reports. Everything from the temperamental elevators to the lot full of dumpsters located directly below many high-rise balconies shed some light on the general living conditions. But it’s the more idiosyncratic glimpses of the infamous concrete tunnel at the rear entrance to Sherbourne Station or the dilapidated Winchester Public School (captioned “Mansion or Mausoleum”) that reflect the residents’ perception of the neighbourhood’s problems.

Unlike many of the studies conducted on neighbourhoods like St James Town, here the residents are acting as researchers. According to the Wellesley Institute’s Michael Shapcott, the residents are describing and defining their neighbourhood—both the positive aspects like community gardens, as well as common plague of buildings in bad repair.

In a city with a fair degree of photoblogging and public-space awareness, it’s appropriate that some of the images deal with simple deficiencies like the lack of trees or the need for beautification projects which could breathe life into the concrete jungle. But the very idea itself — an extension of the Photo Voice and Community Mapping projects — illustrates the more effective ways for people to engage with their community and possibly affect some kind of improvement while they’re at it.

Shapcott says that the initial efforts have already had a ripple effect. People are looking more critically at the quality of housing, jobs and discrimination around them, he explains. And as those involved continue to talk to their families, friends and neighbours, they’ve already managed to engage a much wider group who are now taking responsibility and ownership of their neighbourhood.

Though the exhibition had its initial launch at Rose Avenue public school at the beginning of the summer, Shapcott says that “City Hall is the logical next stop on the tour. It’s symbolic of a place where some, but not all of the concerns can be addressed.” There’s also talk of taking on the road further, to Queen’s Park and possibly even Ottawa.

But for now, Shapcott says the goal of the project is to engage the residents to help define the issues and become part of the solution. As for the exhibition, “You can see that it captures a very rich picture of the neighbourhood,” he says. “It’s not a caricature [depicting] desperate poor people, as there are some positive things.”
 

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