The Dunya Blog

Honoured to have been featured on the cover of The Now last Thursday, June 16! The story is reposted below for archival purposes. Photo credit: Now File Photo

SURREY — This weekend, two longtime pals will begin filming a project that could win them $50,000 and inter-provincial bragging rights.

At the same time, Kashif Pasta and Shyam Valera are also aiming to put Surrey in a better light.

They’re the creative forces behind the comedic “Welcome to Surrey,” one of 30 projects vying for top prize in a Telus-backed Storyhive contest, a community-powered funding program for emerging content creators in B.C. and Alberta.

Makers of the winning web series will be given $50,000 to fund production of a full season that will be broadcast online and also on Optik TV.

The five friends of “Welcome to Surrey” live in that stage between being a kid and having their own, according to Pasta, the project director.

“Surrey gets a disproportionately bad rep, usually based on outdated stereotypes, and we wanted to tell a story that takes place in a city we know and love,” Pasta told the Now.

“We have such an incredible blend of cultures here,” he continued. “Where else would you see chai at a hockey game, samosas at a Superbowl party, a Christmas tree as massive as our city hall tree and a Vaisakhi parade as large as ours in the same place? We live in and enjoy this multicultural landscape we’ve built, but often don’t notice because we never see it reflected back to us.”

Earlier this spring, “Welcome to Surrey” was named among 30 Storyhive finalists following the first round of contest voting. With $10,000 in prize money, the task now involves filming the pilot episode for the final round of voting, which takes place from Aug. 8 to 12.

The pressure is on, but Pasta and Valera have confidence in their Surrey-centric story, which is the biggest project they’ve tackled since first meeting at Tamanawis Secondary a decade ago. After high school, they created a Dunya Media channel on Youtube as a portal for their short comedies and social commentaries.

“We’ve seen a lot of positives here (in Surrey),” Pasta underlined. “I mean, this isn’t a ‘Yay Surrey’ show either, but it’s a normal place and there’s lots of good here and people don’t usually get a chance to notice.”

The “Welcome to Surrey” story follows Suneet, a law student living in Toronto who comes home to Surrey to look after her ailing father. She reconnects with old friends and reignites a romantic relationship that forces her to choose between the predictability of her old life and the exciting but scary potential of her new one, confronting what it really means to leave home and become an “adult.”

In addition to Valera and Pasta playing characters with their real first names, the project stars Suneet Maan as Suneet, Courtney Rufh as Skylar and Bikram Singh as Jag.

They’ll begin filming the pilot episode this weekend at several sites in and around Newton, including key scenes at Old Surrey Restaurant.

“It’s a 10-minute pilot, that’s the time limit, and we’re trying to get it down to 10 minutes,” Pasta explained. “We have our whole season written and what we did with this first episode, once we got the funding, is we combined the first two episodes into one. It’s a swift 10 minutes.”

The script is “feeling right” and rehearsals have been going well, Pasta related.

“I feel confident with this because honestly, the community in Surrey has really been behind it,” Pasta said. “Almost every city councillor was voting in the first round, posting it on their Facebook pages, things like that. And it was an incredibly diverse range of people behind it to, from 13-year-old kids at LA Matheson to 75-year-old white women who are contemporary artists in South Surrey.

“It was really incredible to see that community support and so, with that in mind, I feel really confident about it going into the next round. People are so hungry for content like this.”

Pasta calls “Welcome to Surrey” the most local show among Storyhive projects while also enjoying the most global reach during the first round of voting earlier this spring.

“During that week we reached 34 countries, maybe because we are such a multinational society here, with the network effect of having friends and family seeing it around the world,” Pasta said.

“Our top cities that week ended up being Vancouver, Surrey, Johannesburg and then Richmond, Delta. And it did really well in New Zealand and Sydney. I think people respond well to the idea of people telling their own stories, they can relate to that aspect of it.”

For more details about “Welcome to Surrey,” including a video description of it and other projects entered in the contest, visit Storyhive.com.

It’s here, it’s finally here! Our latest short film, Zoya :) 

When Zoya thinks wearing the hijab will make her stay as anonymous as she already feels at school, it gets her more attention than she could have bargained for.

We hope you enjoy it -- if you do, please like and reblog it to spread the love-- we think we need more stories like this out there!

New Video Alert!

It's been a while, but Overshare is back in action with a Ramadan edition episode that asks the question we've all been asking: what do Jedis and Muslims have in common?

Watch, enjoy, and please reblog if it you enjoy!

Two friends launch Creative Surrey

Story by Jacob Zinn, Photo by Kevin Hill. Reposted for archival purposes.

Read the original at http://www.thenownewspaper.com/news/two-friends-launch-creative-surrey-1.577994

Also in The Vancouver Sun: http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/friends+launch+Creative+Surrey/8751151/story.html

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Two SFU students want to develop a stronger relationship between the arts community and local businesses by creating opportunities for artists and executives to connect on a professional level.

Kashif Pasta, 21, and Shyam Valera, 22, are starting Creative Surrey, a project which they described as a business improvement association crossed with an artist collective. Through a series of meetups, the duo hopes to establish a network for creative minds and business people to share their ideas, work together and generate an economically viable arts industry in the city.

"We have other friends in Surrey who are artists and there's a ton of potential in Surrey," said Pasta. "There's a lot of talent, there's a large audience, there's this whole fusion culture that's really unique to Surrey... and there's no united voice for these artists."

Creative Surrey encourages crosspromotions, urging executives to rely on more local artists when they need imaginative advertising campaigns.

While Pasta and Valera aren't studying in necessarily artistic fields - they're currently enrolled in SFU's communications and biology programs, respectively - their longtime interest in making movies sparked the idea for Creative Surrey.

The two first started recording sketches about six years ago as freshmen at Tamanawis Secondary in the school's video program, and later created a film festival called Montage, encouraging short student films.

"We both shared a passion for film and filmmaking, and when the school got these really simple little cameras, we were like, 'We can make a little thing with this,'" said Pasta.

After high school, the two founded a group in 2011 called Dunya Media to feature short comedies and social commentaries. The group's YouTube channel hosts numerous gutbusting skits - both improvised and scripted - that find humour in conversations they've had about, for instance, driving with an "N" licence or explaining that South Surrey is still part of Surrey.

"Personally, a lot of our sketches just happen in real life," said Valera. "There's just a little bit of an exaggeration.

"We started off with sketches at first, and then now we're moving on to short films, longer-form content."

In a step away from two-minute shorts, the duo is currently finishing up a 12-minute film called Zoya, set to be released later this month.

The story revolves around a teenage girl who has had it with the social hierarchy of

high school.

"She starts wearing the hijab, the head scarf, and that ends up getting her more attention than ever before," said Pasta, noting that the main character ends up running for student council president as a result of her transformation.

In addition to Zoya, Pasta and Valera are in pre-production for a five-part web series called Welcome to Surrey, slated to be released sometime in 2014. With the tagline "You're born in one culture but raised in another," the comedy focuses on five friends in their early 20s who live in Surrey.

"It's a great place to grow up and it's a great place to raise your kids, but in between, it's kind of this empty space," said Pasta. "It's kind of about that period."

As artists in their own right, they've each participated in recent arts-minded events, including the City of Surrey's Creative Economic Summit, to spread the word about Creative Surrey.

While they've seen enthusiasm from the city and local businesses regarding better engagement of the arts, they feel that it's still difficult for photographers, videographers, painters and the like to find work.

"There's a lot of people in the arts field that are just graduating, but they have nothing to do here," said Valera.

Pasta and Valera are trying to set up partnerships with the Surrey Board of Trade and the city before their meetups start in the fall. No specific dates have been scheduled, but artists and executives can keep in the loop by signing up for the initiative's newsletter on creativesurrey.ca.

"We need not just a vibrant arts community but an economically sustainable arts community," said Pasta.

"People need to be able to pay their rent and raise families eventually."

[email protected]

© Copyright 2013

Nine years ago, in 2004, I had Art and French classes with Sibylle Sandvoss in this room. This year, it was the student council room in Zoya as we shot here and all around Shyam and my old high school. Thanks for letting us take over your classroom, Ms. Sandvoss! 

The Surrey Leader: "Film duo aims to make Surrey an 'arts hub'" 

Two Simon Fraser University student filmmakers are keen to help the City of Surrey grow its arts industry and hope a project they plan to launch next month – dubbed Creative Surrey – will help residents get involved.

Kashif Pasta, a student in the School of Communication, and Shyam Valera, biology major, are high school friends who grew up in Surrey and started a film production company called Dunya Media. Their goal is to create video stories that “uplift viewers” with positive messages, promote media literacy and showcase Surrey.

The pair attended Surrey’s recent Creative Economy event to hear more about the economic benefits of a broader and more effervescent arts industry, and Surrey’s growing potential as an “edge city.” Both were encouraged by presentations from a panel that included SFU professors Catherine Murray and Rowland Lorimer.

“Surrey has a huge potential to be an arts hub, and as students and young people in the creative field we are asking questions like, ‘how can we work to sustain jobs in the arts, draw talent in and also retain what we have here?’ ” says Pasta, who also attended the city’s first community summit in April.

Their goal with Creative Surrey is to provide a physical space to facilitate connections between business, artists, schools and government that would help raise awareness of the potential and resources available in Surrey, and turn that awareness into concrete action.

“The vision is still forming, but it will initially involve meet-ups and events to motivate and promote action in and around Surrey's creative industries,” Pasta explains.

Over time they expect the meet-ups will be complemented by an online directory of artists, entrepreneurs and resources, member discounts for services like printing and equipment rentals, community outreach on behalf of the creative industries and more.

“Surrey is a great place to grow up and a great place to raise a family – we’d like to play a part in addressing the in-between stage where young, talented people would benefit from a strong focus on the arts,” adds Valera.

“We understand the business role in this: That for a real, vibrant arts and culture industry, economic sustainability – making art that generates enough revenue to make more art that generates more revenue, and so on – is key.”

Meanwhile, the two already have video credits – including a series called SFU 2065 featured on YouTube – and a slate of ideas for videos underway. They are starting production of a five-part web series called Welcome to Surrey, a comedy about five students (from SFU) in their early twenties becoming adults in a world where culture, identity, life and love are constantly in flux.

“It’s about coming of age in a city that’s not built for it. About being 'from' one culture and born/raised in another. And it’s really, really funny,” Pasta insists.

A short film nearing completion called Zoya is a 10-12 minute comedy film about a teenage girl whose attempts to be cool fall flat – until she makes a fashion statement by wearing a hijab.

The poster for Zoya is here! 

As is the website, TeamZoya.com

And on that website? A clip! Fun times all around. 

Two Simon Fraser University student-filmmakers are keen to help the City of Surrey grow its arts industry and hope a project they plan to launch next month dubbed Creative Surrey will help residents get involved.

Writing meeting for Zoya rewrites, plus early pre-production for the next project.

The City of Surrey's Official Community Plan went public yesterday, and it contains some hopeful support for local arts and culture.

Above are the relevant elements of the "Society and Culture" policies (read more here), and below are some of the most interesting parts:

F7.2 Support artistic expression as being critical to developing a unique identity for Surrey by heightening character, countering anonymity, distinguishing one place from another and creating a sense of meaning and belonging for people.

F 7.4 Develop a range of venues to support cultural expression, education and the enhancement of community life through art galleries, libraries, museums and facilities for performing arts (see Figure 43). 

It's often easy to forget that show business is just that: show business. For a real, vibrant arts and culture industry, economic sustainability -- the ability to make art that generates enough revenue to make more art that generates more revenue, etc. --  is key.

Surrey’s an interesting place. With just over 502,000 people and around 1000 more every month, our six city centres are expected to be home to 1 in 5 residents of Metro Vancouver by 2041. We have people, over 70,000 students in our public school system, two universities, a large number of new and established immigrants (with strong ties to globally expanding markets right accross the bigger pond), we have over 15,000 businesses, and we have a lot of talented artists and other creatives at all stages of their careers.

In short, we have a lot of potential.

The human resources and markets are largely present in the city, but a place that’s so spread out and generally suburban has a few issues when it comes to organic connections forming between artists, businesses, and the rest of the public. Thankfully, our incredibly proactive and progressive city council and board of trade, neither of whom has paid me to say things like that (yet) have partnered to run a series of events designed to support growth and innovation in Surrey’s Arts & Culture industry. This morning was the first. And it was great.

Facilitated by Surrey Councillor Judy Villeneuve, the panelists this morning all enthusiastically supported the idea of Surrey further establishing and growing its arts and culture industry in their own ways.

The panelists were:

Dr. Alan Davies, President of Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Howard Jang, Executive director of the Arts Club Theatre Company

Jordan Strom, Surrey Art Gallery’s Curator of Exhibitions and Collections

Rowland Lorimer, Director of Publishing Programs, Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at SFU

Dr. Catherine Murray, Professor at SFU

You and I both wish I remembered to bring a pen and paper to note down some key quotes. I didn’t. That said, there were some key commonalities between what the panelists said in their 10 minute talks, as different as they all were as individuals. Here are some of those commonalities.

1. Creative industries can have a sizeable, tangible economic impact on communities and cities. 

Not only did 83% of residents in the South Granville neighbourhood around Vancouver’s Stanley Theatre report that they are patrons of the theatre themselves, businesses around the theatre reported a 100%+ increase in sales in the first few years of the theatre’s re-opening in 1998.

86,000 British Columbians work full time in the narrowly-defined arts and culture industry. It’s 4% of our provincial GDP.

Arts grants are not really grants or donations, they are infrastructural investments in the present and future of a city.

2. People are leaving.

They’re leaving Surrey to go places where there are things to do in the evening, where arts are accessible, and where you don’t always have to take a car to get there. Though, as the Surrey Art Gallery’s Jordan Strom pointed out, LA has a fantastic arts community and terrible public transit. This isn’t an endorsement of car culture, but rather an encouraging reminder that we shouldn’t let the lack of an LRT down King George stop us from developing the arts. In fact, developing the arts may be a key factor in getting an LRT or future developments. For real though, side note: can we get that LRT? Streetcars are so cool. And electric. Electric!

Artists are also getting priced out of Vancouver and heading east to Toronto or south to the US. Why not Surrey? Rhetorical question, but you see what we’re getting at here. There are opportunities for attracting talent to the city.

Surrey’s a great city to grow up in, and a great city to raise kids in. But what about in between? There’s a dead space there where a ton of people pack up and leave. And once they’ve settled in another city, it’s hard to get people to move back home.

3. Arts and Culture are Growing

It’s not all doom and gloom. In fact, it’s hardly any doom and gloom at all: the arts and culture sector is growing big time in Surrey and even though we started late, our growth in the sector is outpacing the growth of a lot of places. Plus, the municipal government clearly cares. And we’ve got a great public school system complemented by two world class universities-- Kwantlen in the most densely populated city centre, Newton, and SFU right in the new city centre.

4. More! I really didn’t have a pen. But you might have, what were some other things that were brought up?

Ok. Panel. Cool. Well done. Let’s all clap. Fun! Now what? Some ideas that people brought up, some takeaways, and some potential next steps:

More events like this! The city and board of trade seem to be on the ball with this. Smaller, more specific industry and/or issue focused sessions would be great too, though I don’t expect the city and board of trade to be responsible for all that themselves. How could we do smaller versions of this on our own, as citizens, artists, and entrepreneurs? And are there ways the city/board of trade can help with resources (space, promotion, etc.) to make these things happen?

A business incubator for creative companies. Digital media/physical art/whatever-- it’s possible to make enough money to make these things sustainable, but it’s hard to get started. How can we have space -- anything from some desks and wifi to a little funding -- to get these things kickstarted and help us on our way to economic sustainability?

Design Surrey. Trevor Boddy of TownShift is already working on this, including a book on 10 years of building Surrey. The man knows design, and can use all the support he can get in terms of building design awareness and capacity in a city that already has a world-class design university or two. This is a real project that’s really close and really possible. We can have some very cool, tangible progress by December.

Direct connections between arts, culture, and businesses in Surrey. This event was good, there were businesses and artists, but there wasn’t a lot of connection. This is something I think we can and will do more work around in the months to come, but we need to be very intentional about it. There is a ton of sponsorship/product placement/cross-promotional tie-in potential, and with so many independent artists and independent businesses, the ingredients are here for industrial-strength bonds between arts and business. Let’s build on that.

What do you think? There were a lot of ideas, and pen-less me couldn’t write any down. There’s good stuff I’m forgetting!

We’re still in the early stages here. Arts and Culture, if I understood Dr. Murray correctly, are around 0.25% of Surrey’s industry, financially speaking. But her ambition was inspiring, and it is totally possible to reach 5%. Or to at the very least strive for it.

At the moment, the city of Surrey is a lot of houses and a lot of businesses that build houses. But by forming stronger ties between those businesses, businesses in other industries, and artists that can bring meaning and reflection and a sense of identity and purpose to the daily goings-on that are going on every day here, we can, as a group, move to a place where we aren’t using money to create culture, we’re creating culture that generates money.

The more we develop that, the more people can be artists and entrepreneurs and still be able to afford to raise a family, the closer we come to being not just an urban hub south of the Fraser, but a shining example of a modern city for other urbanizing suburbs to follow.

-Kashif Pasta