[Music] so the vision Soo project is a really exciting one we began in 2021 we spent two years researching uh the history of the Soho neighborhood as well as the role of the hospital in the neighborhood because that's a it had a big role Soho has a distinct history uh it is one of the oldest neighborhood surveyed uh to become part of the city of London so being one of the oldest is important um it's also the neighborhood what becomes known as Victoria Hospital but in 1875 is called the London General Hospital uh so that changes the neighborhood uh as well and makes it different than others uh it is also uh home to uh most of the indigenous people in London uh both historically um and uh and today uh and finally it's an immigrant neighborhood it's not the only neighborhood that immigrants come to in London but is certainly one of the wi and so uh there are uh people coming from all over Europe uh Asia uh the United States um and uh and they they live all together we spoke to uh probably over 100 people um who have ties to that neighborhood uh they spoke about how uh their neighbors um were uh from many different countries and that makes that makes Soo quite different from other London neighborhoods my father actually grew up in that area he his uh parents arrived uh in Canada probably somewhere between 1905 and 1907 when he was born in January of that year there was a Jewish Center in Soo they would have all kinds of um celebrations and parties and and things from the community in general now we're in the third year we're taking all that research and turning it into the signs that will be posted around the neighborhood nine signs eight of them will be outdoors one inside of the old faculty of medicine building uh and those signs will be linked to web resources that will have more pictures uh audio oral histories to listen to more maps to look at and uh more things that can be put on a side through compiling all the research to put together the digital Resource One of the things that we decided was that Community was actually going to be the center of the exhibit through all of the signs through looking at patient experience employee experience and also just the neighborhood more generally the hospital is everywhere the medical school was there my father graduated from that same facility and when my husband and I went to medic medical school we did our entire medical school there we subsequently were host staff across the street at uh Victoria Hospital when we were interning
we did a we each did some weeks in Pediatrics in the children's hospital I'm happy to see that some piece of it is going to still be there like I have I have lots of memories um mainly positive about that whole area actually I really hope that the community is able to uh through our science and through our digital resources get a a sense of place um I find being around Heritage buildings and in those types of environments uh very impactful just by being in the space and then if you add uh the interpretation that we're providing through the size and through the digital resource the community will hopefully be able to get quite a deep understanding of the
legacy of that space the people that were there and the the experiences that they had um I think the best way to understand history is to go at it through the stories what did the individual people experience what were their feelings about something um and we're hoping that our our signs and our digital resources provide that kind of human perspective on the space um and that will hopefully kind of just create again more of a sense of community um and a sense of belonging