Artscape Profiles... Kenneth Slater

To say Kenneth Slater is a familiar face around Regent Park would be an understatement; he’s lived and worked in the neighbourhood for over 20 years and seems to be friends with everyone. Kenneth is a locally renowned drummer, beadworker and cook, but he’s best known as a Youth Worker at Dixon Hall, a multi-service agency that offers support programs for people living in Toronto’s east downtown.

This summer, Artscape partnered with Kenneth and a few other Regent Park organizations to coordinate Show Love, a series of free grassroots drop-in gatherings. Show Love was created in response to the recent shootings at the Eaton Centre as a way for the community members to be positive, develop a deeper sense of community and express themselves creatively. Imagine food, games, music, movies and live performances every Friday from 1:00 to 8:00pm in the park at 42 Blevins Place!

Last Friday, Artscape’s Seema Jethalal, Managing Director of the Regent Park Arts & Cultural Centre, talked to Kenneth about what it’s like to work with youth in Regent Park and how arts and culture have shaped his life.

When did you first come to Regent Park?

I moved here from St. Vincent when I was ten years old. Regent Park was my first home when I came to Canada. It reminds me a lot of my village. It has a village feel.

How did you first get involved with Dixon Hall?

When I was about 14 years old, I wanted to find a summer job. I was hired as a day camp counsellor at Dixon Hall and from there my job has evolved to where it is today.

What inspired you to become a youth worker?

There was a guy named Lucky Booth who used to be a youth worker at Dixon Hall; now he works for the City of Toronto. I think it was being involved in a lot of programs that Lucky ran, just seeing the spin he put on people’s lives through his interactions and his temperament. Nobody was too difficult to work with. He didn’t look at people’s faults. He just looked at the possibilities. That inspired me, because I like playing with people’s brains.

He was kind of like your mentor.

I think so in a lot of ways. It was subtle, but strong. He influenced me to do some positive things in my life but I never really realized it at that time. It was the way he approached me and other people like me—always wanting to know what we were doing and what was happening in our lives. It made us feel like we were a part of his family and he was a part of ours. No time was too late to call Lucky if you needed his help. If he said he was coming, you knew he was coming for sure.

Kenneth in the park at 42 Blevins Place.

What’s a day in the life of a youth worker like?

I show up at 1:00pm, I sit at my desk and within five minutes somebody opens my door and starts to tell me about what’s going on in their life. With some of the things they talk about, you want to tell them that they’re in the wrong, but how do you articulate, “You’re in the wrong” in a way that you’re not judging them? That is the hardest thing to do sometimes. I have a way of listening to what they’re saying and then spitting it back at them in a way where I’m not coming across like I’m judging their choices.

I also run a bunch of programs—a basketball league, a 3-week summer program for kids, Saturday night weekly youth get-togethers and other stuff.

When do you feel the most successful, like you’ve had a great day?

Sometimes it’s really hard to see success in a single day. There have been some points where I’ve felt like, “What the hell am I doing? Am I really making a difference?” That was in the “summer of the gun” in 2005 with all the shooting and a lot of people losing their lives.

One night, I had a conversation with a group of guys that had intention to create mayhem. We sat down and had a real heavy conversation. At no point did I say, “Don’t do this.” I said, “If you do this, what are the consequences? Is it only you that this will affect?” We talked for about two hours. The next day they came back and said, “We didn’t do what we thought we were going to do after we finished talking last night. We kept talking amongst ourselves after we left.”

Why do you think they listen to you in a way they might not listen to their parents?

One of the things I learned from working in day camp is that kids try to get under your skin and if they see they can get a rise out of you they do it all the time. So I never give kids that pleasure. I’m always the even-keel kind of guy.

When there’s something that’s really bothering them, they know that I’m a person they can come and speak to. I’m not going to raise my voice when they tell me they want to do something really outrageous. I’m not going to call them a bad guy, but I’m going to be able to get them to start looking in the mirror and start putting themselves in different shoes.

Free hotdogs draw crowds at Show Love.

Tell me about how you got the idea for Show Love.

When you hear people talking about the Eaton Centre shooting that happened in June, everyone goes into this hate mode. That’s an easy place to go. I thought that instead, we could have something that expresses a sense of love.

To me, Show Love is the first step in building some nuts and bolts relationships. A kid that wouldn’t walk into an office a couple months ago will come to your office because they see you on Friday hanging out with them in their element. You’re building an informal, unstructured relationship. It’s going to make a connection for when the next crisis comes up.

What kind of activities happen at Show Love?

Food is the main thing; food always brings everyone together. Freezies are really big. Lots of giveaway games, potlucks, movies, water balloons and things you would do hanging out with your family in the backyard. When we had a domino tournament, almost 200 people showed up. I’m one of those people who believe, “If you build it, they will come.”

Kids paint to a community mural at a sunny Show Love in July.

What the best thing about working in Regent Park?

Definitely the best part of working in Regent Park is the people. There are some great people here and they’re so devalued. If you were to twist them, just a little, their life could be so amazing. But because they feel so devalued, they devalue themselves. I always say, “You’re worth more than this,” but it’s hard work getting them to believe it. There are some amazing gems here who don’t get a chance to shine. That’s what really drives me.

Arts and culture play a big role in your life. When did you discover the arts?

When I started school in Regent Park, I had a really hard time because I had a strong accent. When you sound different, you’re a bit of an outcast. Fighting used to be my thing because I was bigger than everyone else. You proved yourself by fighting.

At the time, I wasn’t a person who really enjoyed a typical way of learning. We had a drama club and it was Black History Month so we made all these puppets with an Underground Railroad theme. That was an eye opener for me. I said, “Wow, this is another way of expressing myself.” In high school, I did drama for four years. We toured a lot of the public schools with a play that I forget the name of, but I played a hunchback. It wasn’t The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I was the sidekick to the evil guy.

Most people in the neighbourhood know you as a drummer rather than an actor. How did you get involved with drumming?

I was exposed to drumming at a very young age in St. Vincent. My grandmother was a Baptist and that community uses a lot of drums, so I played a little bit back home. When I came to Canada, I met Kjazz, who's really big in the drumming scene in Toronto. He really broke it down for me. He taught me a lot about the drumming tradition: about drumming as a part of our being, the meaning of the rhythms, how it reaffirms spiritual beliefs.

You also do the most incredible beadwork. How did you learn?

When I was first a day camp counsellor at Dixon Hall, a guy named Gomo George led my training. He was a Dread and his wife was Native. As part of our training, he wanted us to learn different art forms so he took me and the other counsellors to a reserve up north to around Parry Sound and we experienced a pow wow, bead-making and some other cultural activities.

His wife taught us the principals behind beading and some typical Native patterns. For some strange reason it clicked for me. When I became the coordinator of the day camp, I started to do a lot of bead-making with the kids and they just loved it. Even now, kids love it—especially folks from Africa and the Middle East. They love it because it’s like weaving. Gomo saw a lot of similarities between Native culture and other cultures.

How does your love of the arts play into your work at Dixon Hall?

Anything I do now, I always throw arts into it. I love the concept of using art to get to some core problems.

It’s a nice, indirect way of addressing stuff that you don’t want to tackle head on.

That’s always been the way I go about my work. Instead of approaching things directly, I take a wider approach. You see things a little differently from a wider approach. It always works.

Photos by Elle Alconcel.