Street life – from the inside looking out

Life on the streets is usually seen through the same dark lens.

“People have an expectation that being on the street is always a bad thing,” says Amber, who left home when she was 15. “They only see junkies or think of lonely, abused kids crying by the side of the road.”

Sitting outside of Alter-Egos Cafe, wearing a green hat with feathers, the 21-year-old talks about the animated film she is close to finishing.

“The film's based on something I wrote – it's about finding quiet time and not getting stuck in a grimy, dirty city where people are unhappy.”

In May, Amber was one of five young people chosen to do a film project dubbed Defective Perceptions. The four-month project, run by Jeff Karabanow, a professor of social work at Dalhousie University, connected young people living on the street with professionals in the film industry.

Meeting three times a week for several hours at a time, the participants learned camera and editing skills.

“My film has this choppy, robotic feel to it,” says Amber who used stop-motion animation.

One filmmaker did a documentary about people who helped him in Truro while another filmed punk shows in Halifax.

Karabanow says many of these young people feel emotionally alienated and distanced from mainstream culture – one reason why they didn't want their real names or pictures used in the article. The project, he hoped, would provide an outlet for their artistic talents and shake off the negative stereotypes society has slapped on them.

“Whenever I do interviews with the media there’s always questions like, ‘why are these kids so lazy, why are they bums who can't find work?’ The truth is, I’m constantly blown away by how creative and articulate these kids are.”

Karabanow has run youth shelters in both Toronto and Montreal and currently researches how young people stay healthy on the street. A paper he wrote on this topic formed the basis of Karabanow's film project, which received a $50,000 supporting grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Miia Suokonautio, director of programming at Phoenix Youth Programs in Halifax, says Karabanow's project is important.        

“It gives youth the sense of self-efficiency to do something and do it well.”

Dorothy Patterson, coordinator of an organization that assists at-risk youth, sees the project from another perspective. She believes it has raised the participants' artistic profiles and has allowed people like Amber to find a niche in life.

Amber’s natural talent so impressed Karabanow that he hired her to work with him on a separate film about street youth he hopes to screen at upcoming conferences and film festivals. Next year Amber will be entering her own film, which is still untitled, in ViewFinders, an Atlantic film festival for youth.

“This project was cool to do,” says Amber. “I had always made art on my own but I had never done it this way.”

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