Channel Migration

CHANNEL MIGRATION is a 14-station audio walk running the full length of Schneider Creek, from Victoria Park Lake all the way to Doon, where the Creek joins the Grand River. 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 creek’s path. For over 192 years (and counting), Schneider Creek has experienced the impacts of settlement, industrialization, and urbanization in Berlin/Kitchener. The Creek has been 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 500m 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.