Join ecologist and professor Andrew Park, writer and tree enthusiast Ariel Gordon, and poet and scholar Kristian Enright as they take you on a two hour mindful walk through Assiniboine Forest.

Combining insights from science and poetry, your guides will use the forest as a catalyst to help you the participants explore the complicated emotions that accompany ecological change. Together, we’ll investigate the forest as a dynamic entity in space and time, and at waystations along the trail, you’ll explore your perceptions of change in a series of generative writing exercises.

About the guides

The program includes a screening of the feature film “The Magnitude of All Things” (2020), directed by Jennifer Abbott, as well as short experimental films by artists Kelsey Braun, Julie René de Cotret, Maureen Gruben, Colleen MacIsaac and Diane Obomsawin. The program will be introduced by Worried Earth research assistant and exhibiting artist Natalie Goulet and assistant curator Melanie Zurba.

Join moderators Erica Mendritzki and Melanie Zurba, and panelists Byron Beardy, Connie Chappel, Seema Goel, and Andrew Park, for a frank and personal discussion of their experiences navigating eco-anxiety and climate-change related grief, within their lives and in their respective professional disciplines. The discussion will include an opportunity for audience questions. Presented in conjunction with the Gallery 1C03 exhibition Worried Earth: Eco-Anxiety and Entangled Grief. 


About the Speakers

Byron Beardy is a fluent Anishininew (Ojibway-Cree) speaker and a knowledge keeper with a focus on indigenous food sovereignty and security from Garden Hill Anishininew Nation. As Program Manager with Four Arrows Regional Health Authority’s (FARHA) Kimeechiminan (Our Food) – Food Security program, he works to support the inclusion of language and identity in the indigenous food sovereignty movement in Manitoba. Byron shares his learned knowledge of indigenous cultural protocols, customs, and practices with a focus on Indigenous food sovereignty, security, and sustainability. He also contributes to indigenous health and food research, co-leading peer-reviewed publications and co-applicant and co-PI on major research projects.  As well, Byron provides Anishininew translation, interpretation, narration, and transcription services for various clients throughout Manitoba. 

Connie Chappel is a Winnipeg-based multidisciplinary artist making sculptural work about environments in crisis. Combining plant-based materials with manufactured ones, she correlates tree survival with human behaviour. Chappel engages observations of destruction, neglect, and preservation as well as material evidence of history having passed. Her work presents tree morphism and suggests a warning and an urgency towards saving our urban tree canopy. Chappel’s sculpture Stone Lung is featured in the Worried Earth exhibition and she also has several works displayed in Manitoba Craft Council’s Eco-Craft exhibition, curated by Seema Goel, and currently on view at the C2 Centre for Craft in Winnipeg.

Seema Goel is an artist, writer, curator, and craftivist. She combines her dual background in the arts and sciences to create work about the relationship between humans and the natural world.  Focussing on ecological agency, economic structure, and biomimicry, she employs an eclectic range of materials to engage viewers through touch, humour, and play. An advocate for positioning the arts and creativity as fundamental to the human experience and critical to problem solving, she is also a STEAM educator facilitating cross-over projects and collaborations between the arts and sciences. She recently curated Eco-Craft, an exhibition exploring various aspects of climate change that emerged from scientist-artist pairings.

Erica Mendritzki is an artist, mother, and Assistant Professor of painting and drawing at NSCAD University.  She is also the curator of the exhibition Worried Earth:  Eco-Anxiety and Entangled Grief, and is Co-Principal Investigator on the research project “Creating Vocabularies and Rituals for Climate Grief Through Multiple Knowledge Systems and the Artistic Process” which is supported by the New Frontiers in Research Fund through the Federal Government. 

Andrew Park is professor of forest ecology at The University of Winnipeg. His recent research includes investigations into forest adaptation to climate change, the environmental psychology of hope, and climate anxiety in the arts. He is a Collaborator on the Worried Earth research project.

Melanie Zurba is an Associate Professor with the School for Resource and Environmental Studies (SRES) at Dalhousie University, which is located in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. She is the Nominated Principal Investigator on the research project “Creating Vocabularies and Rituals for Climate Grief Through Multiple Knowledge Systems and the Artistic Process” which is supported by the New Frontiers in Research Fund through the Federal Government. Melanie is also assistant curator of the Worried Earth exhibition.