Grow Contributers

Chloe Ben­nett

Chloe Ben­nett has been liv­ing in Van­cou­ver since 2008. Orig­i­nally from Kelowna, she is cur­rently study­ing land­scape archi­tec­ture at UBC. Her back­ground in arts admin­is­tra­tion and art his­tory led her to this pro­fes­sion, which mar­ries fine art with envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness. Her final the­sis will look at how res­i­dents might use gar­den design for cre­at­ing habi­tats for other species through cre­ative expres­sion. As urban pop­u­la­tions con­tinue to increase, habi­tat for ani­mal and insect life con­tin­ues to decrease. Con­tact with nature, and other species, may be a vital part of a rich and mean­ing­ful exis­tence. Many peo­ple feel rest­less and stressed in urban life, and expe­ri­ences with nature such as observ­ing life cycles, such as those of the mason bee, can be restora­tive. Habi­tat and art, or ‘habitart,’ is fun and enriches the lives of not only the artist, but their neigh­bours, as well as the sur­round­ing ecosys­tem. She believes that change starts in your own back yard!

Meaghen Buck­ley

Meaghen Buck­ley has been a dancer, lin­guist, data min­ing ana­lyst, knit­ter, activist, layabout, and stu­dent. She is a grad­u­ate of McGill Uni­ver­sity and is home­sick for at least four dif­fer­ent places at any given time. Meaghen is a cur­rent stu­dent in the BFA pro­gram at Emily Carr Uni­ver­sity of Art and Design, with inter­ests in mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nar­ity, par­tic­i­pa­tory prac­tice, and art ther­apy. In her spare time, she teaches chil­dren to dance at Arts Umbrella. Grow is the first pub­lic art project she has been a part of.

Bar­bara Cole

Bar­bara Cole is the founder and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Other Sights for Artistsʼ Projects Asso­ci­a­tion, a prac­tic­ing artist, inde­pen­dent cura­tor, edu­ca­tor, and cura­to­r­ial con­sul­tant in pub­lic art. She has led work­shops, lec­tured widely, and pub­lished arti­cles on the sub­ject of art in pub­lic space. Bar­bara has worked with a range of artists on pub­lic art projects, includ­ing Liam Gillick, Ken Lum, Janet Echel­man, Fiona Bowie, Renee Van Halm, Carol Sawyer, and Susan Point. Her cura­to­r­ial projects through Other Sights includes The Games are Open by Köb­ber­ling & Kalt­wasser (2010), Last Chance by Eric Deis (2010), Vox Pop by Anto­nia Hirsch (2008) and Mar­ble Infra­struc­ture Project, (co-curated with Patrik Ander­s­son) by Cameron Kerr (2006). She taught ses­sion­ally at Emily Carr Insti­tute of Art + Design from 1983 to 1999, recently joined Art­s­peak Gallery’s board, was a past trustee of the Van­cou­ver Art Gallery and Chair of the Con­tem­po­rary Art Gallery, and has par­tic­i­pated as a jury mem­ber for numer­ous art initiatives.

Ocean Dionne

As a designer, Ocean Dionne’s work evolves from mate­ri­al­ity.  Wood, clay, wool and plants are the basis for all of her design explo­rations.  Her con­cern for the long term effects of poor mate­r­ial selec­tion for our built envi­ron­ment focussed her inter­est in design­ing plants into our urban ecosys­tem.  Ocean prefers for peo­ple to take own­er­ship of the designs she cre­ates with their own opin­ions.  To learn more about Ocean Dionne’s design prac­tice visit her web­site.

Duane Elverum

Duane Elverum is Assis­tant Dean of Cur­ricu­lum for Foun­da­tion, and Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor in Design at Emily Carr Uni­ver­sity. He is a sus­tain­abil­ity edu­ca­tor with an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary prac­tice work­ing in the areas of design think­ing, dia­logue process, com­mu­nity engage­ment, trans­for­ma­tive edu­ca­tion and project–based pedagogy.

He has taught design stu­dio since 1995 in the areas of archi­tec­ture, sus­tain­abil­ity, green design, indus­trial design, life cycle assess­ment, fur­ni­ture design, com­mu­nity ser­vice design/build, cre­ative process and foun­da­tion. He is also an asso­ciate with the Cen­ter for Dia­logue at Simon Fraser Uni­ver­sity. He received a bachelor’s degree with hon­ours in archi­tec­ture from the Uni­ver­sity of British Colum­bia for his the­sis on Sus­tain­able Urban Housing.

His teach­ing and research exam­ines the ways that uni­ver­si­ties can pre­pare stu­dents to par­tic­i­pate in a life that promises to be some­what dif­fer­ent than the one we are liv­ing now. He pro­poses that uni­ver­si­ties cre­ate immer­sive project-based, col­lab­o­ra­tive and dia­logic learn­ing mod­els that are trans-disciplinary and ori­ented toward civil engagement.

This com­ing spring he will be co-facilitating a Sus­tain­abil­ity Edu­ca­tion Across the Province work­shop in Van­cou­ver, BC. He has crossed the Pacific Oceans in a sail­boat 6 times, most recently last sum­mer with OceanGybe’s Global Out­reach plas­tics research expedition.

Maria Keat­ing

Maria Keat­ing, B.Sc.(agr.) from the Uni­ver­sity of Guelph, has been work­ing with insects for the last 16 years. Pri­mar­ily she works as a Bio­log­i­cal Con­trol Con­sul­tant for the green­house indus­try. Recently, she has diver­si­fied her teach­ings to gar­den­ers of all kinds, as the “Bug Lady” for City Farmer, the non-profit orga­ni­za­tion that runs the Com­post Hotline.

Ali­cia Med­ina Laddaga

Ali­cia is an archi­tec­ture and urban designer/researcher based in Van­cou­ver. Ali­cia is orig­i­nally from Mex­ico where she stud­ied and prac­ticed archi­tec­ture until she moved to Canada to pur­sue a Mas­ters of Advanced Stud­ies in Archi­tec­ture at UBC which she recently com­pleted. While try­ing to bridge the gap between two cul­tures (Mex­ico and Canada), Ali­cia keeps on devel­op­ing her ideas about the ways in which dynamic and spon­ta­neous processes trans­form cities into vibrant urban environments.

Nigel Laing

Nigel Laing is a Cana­dian pho­tog­ra­pher work­ing pri­mar­ily with dig­i­tal processes. His cur­rent work explores the changes tak­ing place in com­mu­ni­ties across the Cana­dian Arc­tic through documentary–based pho­tographs. While work­ing pri­mar­ily in pho­tog­ra­phy, Laing has also incor­po­rated video, sound and other media in his engage­ment with var­i­ous sub­jects. Laing’s work been high­lighted in mag­a­zines such as Photo Life Expo­sures, and show­cased at art fes­ti­vals such as the Works Fes­ti­val in Edmon­ton, Alberta. He is also an active mem­ber of the Cana­dian Asso­ci­a­tion of Pho­to­graphic Art. Cur­rently, Nigel Laing resides in Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia for the win­ter months and spends the fall and autumn months work­ing as an expe­d­i­tor in the Cana­dian Arc­tic. To learn more about Nigel Laing’s work visit his web­site.

Fabi­ola Nabil Naguib

Fabi­ola Nabil Naguib is an inter­na­tion­ally active artist, author, and activist. She has con­tributed to numer­ous pub­lic, gallery and com­mu­nity projects. Naguib’s art, crit­i­cal essays and poetry have been pub­lished in var­i­ous jour­nals and antholo­gies such as West Coast Line, Fuse, Yishu and Col­li­sion: Inter­arts Prac­tice and Research (Cam­bridge Schol­ars Pub­lish­ing, 2008). She is the author of Unin­hab­it­ing the Vio­lence of Silenc­ing: acti­va­tions of cre­ativ­ity, ethics, and resis­tance (Cre­ativ­ity Com­mons Press, 2007) and was awarded the Usamah Ansari Cre­ative Jus­tice Award in 2010.

Dun­can Martin

Dun­can Mar­tin has been liv­ing in Van­cou­ver since 2003, when he first moved here from Ver­mont to go to UBC.   After an Eng­lish degree and some years of teach­ing, Dun­can began draw­ing on other inter­ests such as design, build­ing, agri­cul­ture, and art, to form the fledg­ling chicken coop busi­ness that he now runs at www​.Dai​lyEggs​.com.  It is a work in progress that thrives on edu­cat­ing, con­nect­ing, and most impor­tantly, get­ting peo­ple started with a flock of healthy, happy, and pro­duc­tive lay­ing hens.  When he’s not build­ing coops, Dun­can is either bak­ing bread, mush­room hunt­ing, tin­ker­ing, or out and about with fam­ily and friends.

Holly Schmidt

Holly Schmidt is a Van­cou­ver artist with a par­tic­i­pa­tory art prac­tice. Her work involves a range of research activ­i­ties that over­lap with the nat­ural sci­ences, sus­tain­able food sys­tems and agri­cul­ture, engag­ing par­tic­i­pants in dif­fer­ent modal­i­ties such as eco-tours, social din­ing and grow­ing. Liv­ing in the Mount Pleas­ant neigh­bour­hood she has observed the chang­ing land­scape of SEFC and has become intrigued by this locale as a site of explo­ration and exper­i­men­ta­tion for sus­tain­able prac­tices. Schmidt is a recent grad­u­ate of the Master’s pro­gram at Emily Carr Uni­ver­sity of Art and Design and a Gov­er­nor General’s Gold Medal recip­i­ent. She has exhib­ited nation­ally at inter­na­tion­ally at Cineworks, Van­cou­ver, Glen­bow Museum, Cal­gary, the Com­pu­ta­tional Aes­thet­ics Con­fer­ence, Banff Cen­tre, the Vis­ningrom­met, Bergen, Nor­way and MAD Emer­gent Art Cen­tre, Eind­hoven, Nether­lands, TEI: Tan­gi­ble Embed­ded Com­put­ing Con­fer­ence, MIT Boston.

Rajdeep Singh Gill

Rajdeep Singh Gill is an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary scholar, cura­tor, and edu­ca­tor. His research areas and inter­ests include cre­ativ­ity, ethics, cog­ni­tive, social, and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, the­o­ries of media, sci­ence, and tech­nol­ogy, and the inter­sec­tions of spir­i­tu­al­ity and socio-political trans­for­ma­tion. Rajdeep has served as a Pierre Eliott Trudeau Foun­da­tion Scholar at the Uni­ver­sity of British Colum­bia (UBC) and Curator-in-Residence at the Van­cou­ver Art Gallery. He has taught at UBC, Emily Carr Uni­ver­sity of Art and Design and the Uni­ver­sity of the Fraser Val­ley. Rajdeep is the co-founder and man­ag­ing edi­tor of Cre­ativ­ity Com­mons Col­lec­tive and Press.

Jason  Packer

Jason draws on a vari­ety of edu­ca­tional and work expe­ri­ences in his role as sus­tain­able build­ing con­sul­tant. With an hon­ours degree in Admin­is­tra­tion, a diploma in Build­ing Tech­nol­ogy and sev­eral years work­ing in the build­ing trades, Jason is ded­i­cated to apply­ing his expe­ri­ence to help develop effec­tive green build­ing strategies.

He has vol­un­teered with a num­ber of envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing the Light­house Sus­tain­able Build­ing Cen­tre and is a mem­ber of the BC Sus­tain­able Energy Asso­ci­a­tion work­ing to pro­mote renew­able sources of energy. Jason has worked on a num­ber of LEED and Liv­ing Build­ing Chal­lenge projects and is par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in LEED for Neigh­bour­hood Devel­op­ment, urban design and com­mu­nity based solu­tions to envi­ron­men­tal issues. Despite his fas­ci­na­tion with sus­tain­able build­ings, tech­nol­ogy and urban design, Jason is hap­pi­est out­side in the woods.