Taste of Regent Park festival July 26-Aug. 30

Regent Park Community Food Centre’s Taste of Regent Park is now in full swing, offering a weekly family- and hipster-friendly festival of the community’s unsung best and brightest.

Part food festival, part world bazaar, Taste of Regent Park, now in its third year, brings together an array of the Downtown East’s talented food community, craft vendors, and entertainers each Wednesday at 5 p.m. through August 30 in the neighbourhood’s namesake green space. (Dundas St. E at Sackville St.) Neighbours can visit for a wide array of locally sourced fruits, veggies, breads, prepared world foods, and artisanal goods at the event’s produce market; live music, dance, workshops, and children’s activities; pay-what-you-can community meals prepared by different local caterers each week; and screenings of family-friendly films through August 16, provided courtesy of the Regent Park Film Festival.

Initially the brainchild of long-time CRC|RPCFC partner The Daniels Corp., Taste of Regent Park is an opportunity to bolster access to good food, offer support to local enterprise, and foster community-building in Regent Park, currently in the midst of a 15- to 20-year neighbourhood revitalization. While Regent Park and the adjacent downtown east often receive attention for lingering challenges, Cavell Hart, Taste of Regent Park Team Lead shared, “The festival is a positive showcase of the talents, skills, and sheer vibrancy of this broadly diverse neighbourhood. Good food—and fun—brings people together, breaks down barriers, and ultimately builds stronger communities.”

With each weekly affair featuring a theme, July 19’s Taste of Regent Park will welcome attendees to enjoy “A Day at the Beach.” Highlights will include Toronto-based reggae act Syd Perry and a fresh fruit smoothie-making demonstration care of Charlie’s FreeWheels’ Bicycle Blender. A screening of Disney’s Moana will follow. Coming weeks’ themes include:

• July 26: “Where the Wild Ones Are”—w/ screening of Hunt for the Wilderpeople
• Aug 2: “Bollywood Glamour”—w/ screening of Jaane Tu…Ya Jaane Na
• Aug 9: “Estate Italiana”—w/ screening of The Bicycle Thieves
• Aug 16: “The Hero in You”—w/ screening of Hidden Figures
• August 23: “Heart and Soul”—w/ “Science of the Circus” workshop led by SciCommTO
• August 30: “Join the Circus”—w/ group run led by Run Regent

What: Taste of Regent Park

Where: Regent Park, northeast corner of Dundas St. E and Sackville St., Toronto

When: Wednesdays to August 30

• 5 p.m.: Produce Market
• 6 p.m.: Community Meal
• Dusk: Under the Stars: Movies in the Park
• Media interviews available weekly 5-6 p.m.

Who: Regent Park-area vendors, artisans, entertainers

Taste of Regent Park is free and open to the public. Community meals served with suggested $4 donation.

About CRC | Regent Park Community Food Centre:

CRC is a multiservice poverty-relief and capacity-building agency operating in Toronto’s Regent Park community since 1964. Serving a neighbourhood distinct in Canada as home to the country’s oldest social housing development and its densest concentration of children living in poverty (58%), CRC provides a suite of services, including 87 deeply affordable housing units; a beautifully maintained 5000-square-foot drop-in space; supports to social enterprise and local upstarts; and the Regent Park Community Food Centre, one of eight national facilities affiliated with Community Food Centres Canada, serving more than 65,000 nutrient-dense meals annually, supporting 187 community gardens, offering year-round food skills/food literacy programming, and providing antipoverty peer advocacy supports.

— Enloe Wilson

Twitter @TasteofRP, @TasteofRegentPark, or www.tcrc.ca