The Creek Collective

Channel Migration
Audiowalk Launch & Urban Hike
SAVE THE DATE

Saturday, May 31, 2025
8:45am — 2pm
Creators: Sydney Lancaster and Geoff Martin
Dance/Aerial Performer: Erika Lui



CHANNEL MIGRATION is a full 13-station audiowalk along Schneider Creek, from DTK to Doon, where the Creek joins the Grand River. This Open Ears Festival launch event will feature a 14km urban hike (with several exit/entry points) and two dance performances—the first at a designated rest stop in the forest at Homer Watson Park and the second at the final bridge crossing in Doon. 

Each station’s soundscape blends field recordings, creek-inspired music, and brief narrative reflections to consider Schneider Creek’s ongoing relationship with the human and more-than-human communities that live beside and within the path of the water. Schneider Creek is the lifeblood of the place we now call Kitchener: a glacial stream shaping the valley it cuts between the city's sandhills; the main route along the Mississauga trail (now Mill St) to the large Chonnoton village and earthworks in the Cherry Park neighbourhood; an industrial sewage drain from the tanneries, abattoirs, and factories; the primary stormwater drain for 67% of the city's land area. The Creek has been exploited as a resource, extensively modified, straightened & partially contained in buried tunnels and open concrete culverts. These dramatic changes to the Creek’s course and flow are important elements of our city’s story, particularly now that a one kilometre stretch of the Creek is being ‘renaturalized’ to mitigate flood risks and improve urban ecosystem health in the face of climate change. 

Channel Migration invites listeners to attend to the Creek’s history and consider the ways it is inextricably bound to our wider community, including both human and more-than-human lives who depend on these waters. Schneider Creek’s story is our story, for good and for ill.


Launch Event/Urban Hike Details:

Meeting Point: gazebo on Roos Island in Victoria/Willow River Park

Urban Hike:
  • 8:30–8:45am: meet at gazebo to receive audiowalk instructions and trifold map 
  • 9am: opening welcome, begin walking
  • ~11-11:25am: Bio Break #1, Tim Horton’s at Courtland Ave./Shelly Dr., south of Block Line Stn
  • ~12:30pm: Aerial Performance & Bag Lunch Break at Rest Stop #2: Homer Watson Park (parking at trailhead, Wabanaki Dr.)
  • ~1pm: Optional Bio Break (Tim Horton’s at Homer Watson Blvd & Pioneer Dr.)
  • ~1:30pm: Final station & dance performance at Old Mill Rd. Bridge.
  • Return to DTK by Bus #10, Bus #16, or by car (if parked in advance or arranging pickup)

Bring:
  • Good walking shoes and socks
  • Smartphone and headphones (or small bluetooth speaker for group listening)
  • Friends and family to walk and talk with between stations
  • Water and bag lunch/snacks
  • Sunscreen/hat/jacket/bug spray/rain jacket
  • GRT transit pass or $3.75 for single bus fare

A Note on Accessibility and Exit/Entry points:
  • The 14km route for CHANNEL MIGRATION follows designated sidewalks, paved walkways, and widened gravel trails. Participants will be crossing roads at controlled intersections at several points. 
  • One 25m stretch is on flat grass where no sidewalk is provided. 
  • Feel free to join or leave the walk as you feel able. There are several exit/entry points at which participants may wish to meet the group walking the full length or bow out of the full hike. 
  • The following ION stations and bus routes provide exit/entry points for those who wish a shorter walk, or to do the walk in shorter sections:
    • Mill Street iON Station 
    • Block Line iON Station 
    • Route 6 (Courtland Ave)
    • Route 10 (Doon, Mill Park Dr. to Fairway Rd.l)
    • Route 16 (Conestoga College, Homer Watson Blvd, to Waterloo Public Square)


Artists

Sydney Lancaster (they/she) is a multidisciplinary artist and writer whose practice considers the intersections of place, history, memory, and identity. They are interested in the constructed nature of narratives of place and history within which human understanding is situated. What is left out of these stories is as important as what is given voice. What becomes ‘real’ or ‘true’ changes over time, exposing gaps, fragments, and shifts in (mis)understanding. Her approach is rooted in the senses, and in physical/temporal relation to the environment.  They work in video, photography, sound, printmaking, sculpture and installation, durational performance, and words. Sydney holds a BA in English from the University of Alberta, and an MFA in Studio Practice from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, and she has shown in artist-run and public galleries across Canada, and in the US and UK. www.sydneylancaster.ca
Erika Lui (they/ them) is a multidisciplinary circus and movement artist, teacher and neuroscientist based in the Waterloo Region of Ontario. In the air, they specialize in aerial silks, rope (aka. corde lisse), and duo trapeze, and on the ground as a partner acrobatic flier, acrobatic dancer, and trampolinist. Erika’s equivocally diverse movement background was honed as an adult student at Chicago’s Aloft Circus Arts 2018 professional training program and the Chicago Centre for Dynamic Circus (CCDC). This dynamic power and versatility is what sets them apart as a performer, bringing both technical precision and a unique quality of air-sense to every act. They are known locally as an aerial instructor, bringing their own independent teaching practice to students at Grand River Rocks Kitchener. Erika also works as an artistic collaborator for various movement groups, and as a member of the Creek Collective, working with a variety of interdisciplinary artists throughout the region and Canada. They often create work that relates to the environment, mental health and other current issues in today’s society, exploring avenues of healing and connection through art and community. www.erikalui.com
Geoff Martin (he/him) is a place-based and environmental writer whose essays have won TNQ’s Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest and been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in Literary Review of Canada, Boulevard, Creative Nonfiction, and Poetry in Place (Guernica Editions, 2025), among others. After a decade spent teaching English in Chicago, writing in Western Massachusetts, and care-giving in San Francisco, he moved home in 2021 to Waterloo Region, where he grew up. He is a former CNF contributing editor with Barren Magazine and is the co-founder of The Creek Collective, a group of interdisciplinary artists creating work in response to—and alongside—Schneider Creek in Kitchener. www.geoff-martin.com
The research creation and public launch of this work has been made possible by the following funders: