The Community EditionCOMMUNITY, ARTISTS CELEBRATE SCHNEIDER’S CREEK
As brief spurts of rain trickled down, flowing into the rushing streams of water below, people from all around Kitchener and the Lower Doon neighbourhood gathered atop the Old Mill Rd. bridge for the inaugural CreekFest on Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025.
Put on as a collaboration between The Creek Collective, Reep Green Solutions, Homer Watson House & Gallery and an organizing committee from the Lower Doon neighbourhood, the event took place at the meeting point between Schneider Creek and the Grand River—just downhill from the annual Homer Watson House Art Fair.
An array of tents by a variety of arts groups and environmental organizations dotted the length of the bridge, along with free face painting, a bike decorating booth and a community painting activity.
Performances of all sorts ran throughout the afternoon, from watershed readings by renowned local authors Ellie Anglin and Tanis Macdonald to musical acts by Kaleo and Jesse Thomas. Erika Lui performed both an aerial and ground dance on top of and below the bridge as a response to CHANNEL MIGRATION, a Schneider Creek audiowalk launched by The Creek Collective earlier this year at Open Ears – Festival of Music and Sound.
The idea for CreekFest came about following a community mural event facilitated in June 2024 by local artists Jackie Bradshaw and Nadine Badran, both of whom are members of Creek Collective.
Community members were invited to meet above the Schneider Creek tunnel behind Reep House, along Queen St. and Mill St., to partake in an all-ages community mural workshop.
“It went so successfully, and a lot of people were interested in the work. We liked how it drew people’s attention to the presence of the creek that’s tunneled there,” Geoff Martin, one of the three co-founders of the Creek Collective, said.
The Creek Collective was founded by Geoff Martin, Sydney Lancaster and Deborah Carruthers.
The three artists formed The Creek Collective after discovering a common interest in each other’s works in relation to Schneider Creek, and they have since added a variety of local artists to their membership.
“We aim to spur consideration of the Creek not simply as an exploitable resource or neglected storm sewer but as a community member who is essential to life in Kitchener,” the organization’s website reads.
“It’s both a neighbourhood block party and also a city watershed festival. [We’re] calling people down to the mouth of the creek to think about where their creeks flow to. It’s Schneider Creek, but the Henry Sturm and Strassburg, Shoemaker and Montgomery and Balzer—those creeks all flow into Schneider Creek. The water that’s travelling under this bridge is coming from 67 per cent of the city,” Martin said.
Martin credited the Lower Doon community as a key support in organizing the event and especially Ben McCann who is a local resident and one of the co-organizers.
“The whole idea was to make it not just be about the neighbourhood, but to bring people in from Kitchener into here to learn more about the watershed,” McCann said.
Conversations for CreekFest 2026 have already begun, according to Martin.
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