The first sound art I made was in my bedroom at my grandparents’ house. Thanks to my grandfather’s flea market skills, by the time I was four or five I had a tape recorder and a turntable/8-track/radio combo. I would spend hours listening to albums passed down from my great-grandmother’s collection, falling in love with the textures of radio static as I turned the dial in search of a signal in rural Wabanaki. I recorded tapes pretending to host a radio show, cueing up selections from records, mixing in interviews with my cat and Acadian great-grandmother, and layering it all with the sounds of nature drifting through the window. Sound was a magical thread that tied together my intimate yet infinite world. The original signal—the song, the station—was never entirely clear. It was always beautifully distorted by people, place, and time.

Now an adult, I share my love of sound with children through teaching and creative collaboration. Children relate to sound in ways that are playful, intuitive, and grounded in sensory experience. Their approach to listening is often free from the fixed meanings and assumptions adults carry. This openness invites wonder, experimentation, and a relationship to sound that resonates with the values of deep listening. My work with children centres on nurturing that openness—cultivating sound making as a relational creative practice. Together, we improvise, explore, world-build and deconstruct, and learn through shared, process-based discovery. Whether we’re making instruments from recycled materials, recording the wind, remixing rhythms, tuning into underwater soundscapes, or mapping sonic relationships between place and body, sound becomes a space of connection, curiosity, and co-creation. These playful and emergent practices invite participants to reimagine what sound can be and how listening shapes our understanding of the world and each other. Alongside this, I teach foundational sound practices like field and studio recording, mixing techniques, and sonic storytelling—with a focus on analogue methods and open-source tools that make sound work more accessible and earth/community-bound—DJ-ing the everyday with sound as a dynamic, responsive medium for transformation and collective play.

I’ve been grateful to collaborate with youth in many roles—including co-creating a music program for kids with disabilities, collaborating on Elder–Youth and cross-cultural film projects in Indigenous communities, and facilitating intergenerational storytelling through sound. I’ve also served as an artist-in-the-school and led youth-focused projects with arts centres and community organizations. In all of this work, I’ve witnessed the power of creativity to ground, transform, open up possibility, facilitate cultural exchange, and strengthen community. I also continue to learn from kids—especially about the art of play, deep listening, and staying attuned to what’s emerging. Their presence always renews my love for sound and the endless world of expression.