One of the many interesting people we met through the Roncesvalles street festival is Matt Greenwood, the local artist behind http://takepicturedontsteal.com.  Take picture don’t steal features a collection of photos taken randomly by people around the city that come across a disposable camera on their path. Attached to the camera is note that says ‘take picture don’t steal’. The result is a set of images that are a very honest depiction of people in their element. Matt describes: ” The main thing that comes across is how natural people are in the photos because they are often with their friends and loved ones. …Toronto is an interesting city for this project because of it’s diversity & distinct neighbourhoods. I like the idea of making a portrait of the city.”

Check out the website.  If you come across one of Matt’s cameras you’ll have the chance to contribute to his evolving portrait of the city.

See also my notes below from a mini-interview with Matt.

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1) What motivated you to do this project?

I had an old disposable camera sitting around & wanted to do something cool with it.
I saw this youtube video last year – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWQR36dW0GA

and found it interesting how people react when faced with a camera, but no cameraman.
I also wanted to do something local about Toronto because it’s a small enough city that people can feel a strong connection with the different areas.

2) Are you from Toronto? If not, have you done this in your home town? How is Toronto different?

No, I’m from England but live here now. My brother still lives in the UK and agreed to put up a camera in a park in Birmingham.
Its hanging up there now..hopefully it survives!

I’ve got a few cameras out in various countries around the world through friends who are traveling/living abroad.
Today I dispatched a camera to NORTH BAY, Ontario. I have no idea what goes on there.

Toronto is an interesting city for this project because of it’s diversity & distinct neighbourhoods. I like the idea of making a portrait of the city.

3) Do you see any interesting trends in the photos?

The main thing that comes across is how natural people are in the photos because they are often with their friends and loved ones.
Plus the fact that it’s a cheap disposable camera helps. If they had to go into a booth with a digital HAL lens staring at them, people wouldn’t be nearly as candid. I tried to get the cheapest, crappiest looking cameras I could find.

I sometimes hang around in the background after I put up the camera just to see how people react to it. They seem to immediately get it & feel comfortable with the whole thing.

oh and another trend is people sticking their tongues out.

4) Have you ever had a camera not work out?

Well, a few stolen. More than i expected actually…at first i found it kind of interesting to think why someone would steal a disposable camera half full of pics of strangers & have to pay $10 to get it developed, but now it’s just annoying! I’d think I’ve had about 5 stolen so far. Bay st was the first casualty.

Thanks to Matt Greenwood for sharing this project with us.

This past weekend 5 Blocks Out made it’s first public appearance at none other than… the Roncesvalles Polish  Street Festival.

Good times on Roncesvalles Ave

(In case you were wondering, you don’t have to be Polish to participate. In fact, the Polish contingent may have been in the minority. Polish food and music, however, were there in abundance. Hooray!)

The event was a great success. We are inspired by all the wonderful people we met, both from Roncesvalles and many other parts of town. Thank you to all those who stopped by our booth to talk to us. We will be sending those of you that were interested an invitation to join 5 Blocks Out in the next few days.

We did a raffle, and we’d like to announce the winners here:

1st Prize — $100 to spend at any local Roncesvalles business or charity — goes to: Kalyna Bo

2nd Prize — a limited edition Roncesvalles T-shirt — goes to: Nicole Ysabet

3rd Prize — a subscription to Spacing Magazine — goes to: Anthony Mohamed

Congratulations to our winners!

And a big thank you to our volunteers!  We couldn’t have done it without you.

Welcome to the 5 Blocks Out blog!

If you’ve been following our writing over the past few years you’ll know we’re avid explorers of Toronto, its many unique neighbourhoods, and the lives of its citizens. That interest has spawned a new project and web site — 5 Blocks Out — which we’ll be writing about here.

We plan to blog about the vision behind 5 Blocks Out, ongoing feature additions and improvements, and stories on how people are using the site in everyday life. We’ll also include musings on interesting things we discover around the city. The majority of our time is now spent on 5 Blocks Out, so we’ll be writing more here and less on the Mukodu Blog.

So, what is 5 Blocks Out? It’s an online community that helps people share local knowledge about their neighbourhoods with other people across the city. It’s local knowledge created by the people, for the people.

Who built it? And why did we bother?  We’re two Roncesvalles locals who want to fill a void in connecting local people with local knowledge.  Upon moving back to Toronto after years living away we found it difficult to keep track of all the change that had gone on in different neighbourhoods, and all the activity going on across this bustling city. We also realized we were surrounded by heaps of interesting people, but with few ways to hear from them. If you’ve ever moved within a city, or between cities, you’ve undoubtedly experienced this exact same pain. Over time we dug up many useful local resources, mostly through well-informed friends who were in the know. But we kept thinking there had to be a better way to share information about what’s great nearby.

If you go to the site you’ll notice membership is currently by invitation only. We have a merry band of members helping us test and improve the site before we open it up broadly. If you’re interested in giving feedback and becoming part of the community using this somewhat raw form of the website we would love to have you on board. We’ll send you an invite if you go to 5blocksout.com and add your email address in the “Sign up” section with a comment on how you heard about us.

The first phase — the stuff that’s up and running now — helps people share knowledge about local places within Toronto. Beyond that we’re dreaming about many other types of neighbourhood resources and information. There’s a huge number of directions we could go in, so we would really appreciate help in prioritizing. What would be most interesting and helpful to you? We’re all ears! Comment on this blog post, email us at blog at 5blocksout.com, or send feedback on the site.

Till next time… toodle-loo.

Katrin Lepik and Oshoma Momoh
Roncesvalles, Toronto — September 23, 2009