Community Knowledge Centre - Toronto Community Foundation

About this organization

Mission

SkyWorks is a catalyst, advocate and participant in social change through community centred film making and public engagement. We work with communities to make documentary films that deal with contemporary social issues and then use them as community development tools, working with local, regional, and national groups, to create strategies for systemic change. We firmly believe that in the collective lived experience of its members, our society can find solutions to its most difficult social concerns - through sharing and exchanging with each other our stories and building strategies based on collective experiences.

History of Organization

SkyWorks Charitable Foundation was established in 1983 as a non-profit documentary organization dealing with contemporary social issues. SkyWorks has a long history of making documentaries that engage Canadians in building healthy communities.

Our key areas of focus have included:

• Issues affecting children, youth and families (Home Safe project, Kids Care)
• Community engagement in health care (To Hurt and To Heal, Jake's Life, The Right to Care, How Can We Love You)
• Workplace equity (Moving Mountains)
• The criminal justice system (Until Someone Listens, Crisis Call)
• Mental health and addiction (Working Like Crazy, Crisis Call, Prescription for Addiction, Recovering Love)

Accolades and Accomplishments

SkyWorks founding director/producer Laura Sky, has won many awards and honours for her documentary work including a Gemini nomination for To Hurt and To Heal, a CALM Award (New York), a Golden Athena (Athens International Film Festival), the Silver Apple (Oakland), and numerous festival invitations around the world. She has been presented with an honorary doctorate degree from Laurentian University for her achievements in documentary.

Since 1983, SkyWorks documentaries have been used by hundreds of community organizations, schools, universities and colleges, proffesional associations, social service agencies, government departments, libraries, faith groups, and other users, and have been seen by thousands of viewers accross Canada. The impact of this work has been to educate audiences about important social issues, challenge discrimination and stereotypes of marginalized groups, influence the thinking and practices of service providers and public policy makers, and inspire individuals to become involved in local efforts and strategies to create positive change for their communities. 

Programs

>Real Change Youth Documentary Program
>Home Safe: A Documentary Community Development Project with Homeless Children and their Families

We focus on documentary and community development projects in four program areas:

• Working with Children, Youth and Families as a force for social change
• Promoting recovery by challenging stereotypes and systemic barriers with people experiencing Mental Health issues
• Informing and supporting Community Engagement in Health Care policies and practices
• Exploring and documenting alternative approaches in perception, practice and policies in the Criminal Justice System

Documentary projects are developed closely with community members, advisers and organizations, who inform each project through all phases including research, production, and community dissemination. Typically, participants from the films are trained as facilitators to appear with the films at screenings and workshops, engaging directly with audiences. Our documentary tool-kits include support materials such as user and facilitator guides, teacher guides, and other print materials which are made available through our web site.

In our National Home Safe Public Engagement campaign we are working in Ontario and with the Canadian Community Economic Development Network in Western Canada to hold screenings and workshops to engage communities around family poverty and homelessness and the need for a national housing strategy.

We have launched a new film on mothers in recovery from addiction, Recovering Love, and are using it in training with addiction treatment providers, Children's Aid workers, and other groups to address stigma and discrimination directed against women struggling with substance abuse.

Our SkyWorks North office in Thunder Bay has been using documentary as a community development tool with youth and adults in Northern Ontario, with special focus on issues facing aboriginal communities.

Our Real Change Youth Documentary Program is a logical evolution of our community development approach, turning the process of filmmaking over to marginalized youth to find their own voices, develop skills, and becoming actively engaged in community issues which affect them and their families.

Real Change Youth Documentary Program

Real Change is a filmmaking mentorship program for youth between 14 and 19 years old. The program is designed to provide marginalized youth with a space to make films with a social change emphasis, tell their stories, engage in community issues, develop skills and leadership potential, and acquire knowledge and experience that will provide a foundation for them to explore further studies and careers in media, journalism, arts and related fields. The film projects are youth-driven with the support and mentorship of experienced filmmakers and youth facilitators. 

Funding and Program Partners

Real Change workshops are developed and run in collaboration with various community partner organizations which to date include the Toronto District School Board, Toronto Public Libary, Success Beyond Limits, Plan Canada, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Toronto, Charles Street Video, the Centre for Urban Schools at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Funding partners include the Toronto District School Board, the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, and private donors.

Program Impact

The Real Change Youth Documentary Program will: 

• provide marginalized youth with the opportunity to tell their stories and find their voice on issues that impact them, their families and communities
• provide professional training and skills that may lead to further education and career opportunities in media, arts, journalism, community work, civic leadership and other fields
• foster sense of belonging and community engagement by youth
• develop leadership and mentorship skills
• create forums for youth perspectives to be heard by the broader community, through screenings of films in schools, libraries and other public venues
• Open doors for youth to connect with community and media mentors, and build networks of support
• foster self-confidence, self-esteem and agency
• encourage critical thinking and critical self-reflection on social issues

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

Leadership and Belonging:

"One-quarter of Toronto’s youth don’t feel they belong to their local community, a feeling that is reflected in more than half of young adults"

(Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2010)

SkyWorks' Real Change program encourages youth to find their own voice and to connect to their communities by making films about real things and real issues that affect them and the larger world around them.

Home Safe: A Documentary Community Development Project with Homeless Children and their Families

Home Safe is a documentary and community development project to make visible the experiences and needs of children and their families who experience poverty and homelessness. The project focuses on children under the age of 18 who, along with their families, have been forced into shelters/motels, hostels or transition houses or who are 'couch surfing' with family and friends - all as a consequence of poverty and/or family crises. 

Home Safe provides community leaders and housing advocates with a documentary tool kit they can take into board rooms, conferences, community events, and policy meetings. There are three films in the series, which have also been adapted for use in schools with teacher resource guides. The stories depicted in films enable community spokespersons to bring the homeless children and their families into those rooms, to bring them to the table, so that they are present and included in all the discussions that are about them.

Our public engagement work with Home Safe includes public screenings and discussions with audiences, screenings in schools, and training workshops with a wide variety of community agencies and organizations whose work impacts families and children facing poverty, homelessness, and impending housing crises.

Funding and Program Partners

Home Safe Toronto Project Partners & Advisors

Women’s Habitat · Transitional and Supportive Housing Services of York Region · Vanier Institute of the Family · The Wellesley Institute · Elementary Teachers Federation of Toronto (ETFO) · Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario · Osgoode Hall Law School · Family Service Association of Toronto · Income Security Advocacy Centre (ISAC) · Nellie’s Shelter for Women · Ontario Association of Food Banks · Aisling Discoveries Child and Family Centre · Scarborough Family Residence · Caring Alliance · Campaign 2000 Family Service Association · Toronto District School Board · Community Social Planning Council of Toronto · Kids Builder Research Project Phase II · Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario

Program Impact

The goal of the Home Safe project is to support and encourage audiences and communities to engage in action, through dialogue and participation in organizations and initiatives aimed at addressing homelessness and poverty. The films challenge the invisibility and shame experienced by children who are homeless, and challenge the stereotypes that keep them marginal. These outcomes have been confirmed through feedback from hundreds of  audience members who have seen the films, and have shared their feelings and responses to us through audience questionaires. The films have been screened at numerous conferences and workshops with policy makers, social workers, child welfare workers, community housing and municipal service providers, and many other groups - many of whom talk about how the stories in the films have changed their perceptions of people who are homeless, and the systemic issues that underlie poverty and homelessness.

Through our schools initiative, Home Safe materials are being used to sensitize teachers and students to issues of poverty and homelessness.   

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

"Housing is a basic human right. However, housing continues to become increasingly difficult to afford for Torontonians...Toronto moved from the ranks of the ‘seriously’ unaffordable to the ‘severely’ unaffordable housing markets"

(Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2010)

Participant Vignette

"A little over a year ago, SkyWorks entered our life and has taken my family on a journey of hope and truth.... SkyWorks gave us the opportunity to own our story, begin shedding our shame and restore our dignity. SkyWorks offered my family the chance to speak and be heard and begin a new chapter; the chapter my family refers to as hope. 

Through this film we are given a platform to challenge the stereotypes and address the urgent need for accountability and change. The process that SkyWorks uses has allowed me and especially my eighteen year old son to be instruments of this change. I am extremely proud of my son, Jesse, for embracing the role of advocate and am grateful that he was encouraged to do so by SkyWorks. Jesse and I talk often about how going out with the film and sharing his story has been essential in his ability to process the trauma he experienced through events that he had absolutely no control over. He now has a sense of ownership to his story. 

Through these facilitations Jesse has grown in amazing ways. He has a new sense of confidence as well as an awareness of the need for social justice. He is acquiring leadership skills that are substantial for a young man to succeed, not only in life, but in developing his character..." 

- Colleen Richards who, with her family, participated in Home Safe Toronto