This summer, our team at Concordia University helped develop the training guide for Documenters Canada in Alexandra Park, a vibrant and active community in downtown Toronto. This, our first Documenters Canada branch, was being run by The Green Line, so we worked closely with them to develop the guide.
Despite being in the same country, Toronto and Montreal are vastly different cities. To create training materials, we had to understand the Alexandra Park neighbourhood and the municipal governmental structures in Toronto while seeing how we could integrate Documenters into the community.
In one month and a half, we worked on developing a three-session course for our first Documenters cohort. This is what our process looked like:
- Start with an outline: When you begin the course creation process, it can seem intimidating; after all, you’re designing something that not only teaches people – in this case, community members who might have not been in a classroom for a while – but also holds their attention for one or two hours. I used to work as a graphic designer in a team that would develop courses. When we began, we always started by creating a list of the concepts we needed to include in our course. Based on that, we would construct a PowerPoint, titling each page with one of those concepts. This bare-bones structure would be like a to-do list of ideas we needed to research and add to.
- Study: Being thoroughly informed was also key for course creation. To develop a course, you must know as much as possible about a subject. It’s almost like you’re re-teaching yourself a concept before you teach it to others. I had to revisit all I knew about Documenters. If I had to recommend three resources, they would be:
- The View from Somewhere Episode 13: The End of Extractive Journalism-> When journalists enter marginalized communities, write people’s stories and distribute them without supporting them or asking for input from their source, that is extractive journalism. Within this episode, Lewis Raven Wallace, the podcast host, narrows in on how two media organizations are avoiding extractive practices through power-sharing and providing journalism created for the communities who are the voices of their stories, sharing information with them. One of these organizations is Documenters. (Note from Magda: this episode is amazing, changed how I think about teaching journalism, and is one that I think everyone who cares about journalism should listen to!)
- “Q&A with Darryl Holliday: Lessons in training everyday people to document public events”-> This is a straightforward article that breaks down the Documenters process in the United States. It’s perfect for a quick revision of what Documenters does and their values.
- Outlier Media’s Meet a Documenter-> The Detroit Documenters have a monthly blog post featuring a Documenter. These blog posts show the range of experiences that Documenters have, their backgrounds, and how they feel about Documenters. It’s a great way to gain insight into the people who show interest in Documenters and want to be a part of it.
In the second meeting, we asked the students to plan out what would be a joint visit to city council to try out the process of documenting.
In the final meeting, the community member-Documenters went down to Toronto City Council, observing the meeting, jotting down notes in real-time and applying the lessons they had learned from the class to real life. Afterwards, they debriefed, and the notes from this meeting became their first publication.
- Know your neighbourhood and your government: For us, that meant reading about Alexandra Park and Toronto’s municipal government structure (yikes!). I watched videos on how the municipal government in Toronto functioned and read through the City of Toronto website extensively. Afterwards, I used the slides to re-teach myself the concepts, breaking them down in a way that would be understandable to someone who didn’t know about Toronto’s municipal government. To gain greater insight into Alexandra Park, we looked at blog posts, academic articles, news stories, and books discussing the community’s people and infrastructure. In May, we also visited the Scadding Court Community Centre, located at the heart of Alexandra Park, where we walked around and talked to community members to understand the area beyond books.
- If you don’t know, ask: No amount of reading or visits can change the fact that no one from the Montreal team ever resided in Alexandra Park; our lived experiences varied from theirs. To fill in our knowledge gap, we contacted subject matter experts. We conducted meetings and interviews with community leaders at Alexandra Park, making sure their experience carried over. In the training that we eventually developed, we also made sure to have guest speakers from Alexandra Park and the team at The Green Line.
- Review, review, review: Having multiple people review the course ensures that we missed no perspectives and that the content is absorbable. When we get too into the research process, course concepts tend to become more convoluted. Group review sessions with the whole Documenters team also allowed for discussion, which often led to more clarity and new ideas to emerge.
- Bonus: Make your slides fun! Add colour and fun graphics (Canva is an easy tool to use, but PowerPoint is underrated for graphic design). Interesting slides that balance text and visuals can keep students paying closer attention. As a graphic designer, I often break down text-heavy slides into infographics. What you don’t say on the slides can be shared with notes afterwards. I would recommend keeping your text at six bullet points maximum, with four being the recommended number for accessibility standards,
This is just a summary of our steps to creating a Documenters Canada training. Feel free to use our courses (linked here) as a starting point for your own training materials. Documenting is an act of sharing information, so communities feel empowered and informed. The process of creating your own Documenters branch is the same; we’re all working towards the same goal, so if you have any questions, feel free to reach out!
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