An Invitation: Meet your hosts

Welcome to Sound Ground, a unique podcast series celebrating the intriguing sounds of Nature and the profound voices of those who care for her. Hosted by Agnieszka Zuchora, Anne-Marie Daniels, and Abigail Lalonde.

 

This podcast aims to showcase the integral relationship between humans and the natural world. Each episode will offer an experience of connection, highlighting our ever-changing relationship with nature. 

In this exploratory series, you'll get to meet our hosts, from various walks of life, each on their unique journey. In our first episode, we introduce you to Anne-Marie, a mediator venturing into biomimicry. She is deeply passionate about sowing seeds of kindness and creativity, inspired by the problem-solving genius of nature. Also, meet Abby, a recent graduate from the University of Montreal, who cares deeply about space making, placemaking, and forming connected relationships. Lastly, Agnieszka, a multidisciplinary practitioner finding ways to blend her passions of sustainability and spirituality through nature based workshops, sound healing, and her formal work in environmental assessment. 

The Sound Ground podcast is the fruit of our collective desire to express gratitude for Mother Earth and all it provides. We aim to better support nature, encouraging everyone to make daily choices that acknowledge and uplift it. This space serves as a platform to share, learn and inspire each other while discussing innovative solutions to the environmental challenges we face today. As our journey unfolds, we are eager to invite special guests to discuss an array of topics, from climate anxiety to Nature R&D projects and everything in between.

We hope you join us on this journey of illuminating exchanges and deepening connection with nature. Remember to click subscribe to be notified when we release new podcast episodes. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Music.

(00:07):
Nature are leading. You're listening to Sound Ground, a celebration of sound,
of voice, of story, and change, where we seek to illuminate instances of relationships with nature.
I'm your host, Agnieszka Zuchora, or affectionately known as Aggie.
We express our infinite gratitude for Mother Nature, for Earth,
and everything that it carries us through.

(00:27):
We also want to acknowledge the land where this is being recorded.
I myself am on the land of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples, the Songhees and
Esquimalt First Nations.
Your other host, Anne-Marie, is located on the land of the Wasanich people,
and Abigail Lalonde is on the land of the Ghaniikahaga.
We give gratitude for the wisdom and leadership of Indigenous communities and

(00:47):
a continued commitment to living in harmony with nature.
Welcome to Sound Grounds. We're so excited to be here with you today.
Today, we're just going to introduce ourselves and give you a little bit of
an idea of what this podcast means to us and the path that we hope to take you on.
I would love for each of us to introduce ourselves.
Anne-Marie, if you wouldn't mind starting telling us a little bit more about

(01:10):
what you care about, what your journey's been, and for you, what this podcast is a chance for.
Sure. Yeah. Thank you for creating the space for this podcast.
I think, I'm going to take it backwards. The podcast feels like a chance to
seed more creativity, inspire more creativity.

(01:33):
That's what Nature R&D is about, is about putting more good choices in the daily
lives of the average person. and a lot of those good choices are created by
each of us, all of us, ourselves.
I really believe everybody has a piece of the puzzle. And I know that because

(01:53):
I worked as a mediator for so long and in the kind of mediation,
maybe I've talked about this before, but I don't give solutions or offer advice.
And I believe that people are the best experts on the problem and that everybody,
yeah, has this piece of the puzzle.
And so in that way, I've been able to go through life, not having to be the

(02:16):
smartest person, but just rather surround myself with the smartness,
the creativity, and of course the kindness.
And I kind of think that the meaning of life is to throw kindness forward.
If there's one thing that I,
that really the biggest thing that lands with me, that makes me who I am,
is the kindness that my elders and my community has shown to me to help me become more creative.

(02:44):
And so this podcast is a chance to share some of the good things that we're
doing and also find ways to include people in that so that we can all be sowing
more seeds of kindness, sowing more seeds of creativity.
And, yeah, extending the reach of the solution space because we got a lot of

(03:07):
problems going on, but there's not enough talk about solutions.
And so, yeah, my background is in mediation, and then I discovered biomimicry,
which is about how nature solves the problem.
And when I discovered that
I suddenly realized that we had

(03:27):
a just a goddess in this
space and and suddenly there's room
for everything to be possible but we just all need to learn how to learn from
nature and so we'll look at all kinds of different examples of how nature solves
different problems and how that can be be applied in the world.

(03:51):
And also, I guess the last thing I want to say is that we also,
I believe it's really important to support nature in her best work.
And so I hope this podcast will also help to give people ideas about how they
can support nature, because obviously we get everything, including our breath, you know, from nature.

(04:12):
But what are the sort of things we can do on the daily.
What are the choices we can make
on the daily that send that message of nature? I see you. I'm with you.
I'm working with you. We're going for it. And get us to a place where.
I mean, we're turning this thing around.
Saving the world is an overused phrase, but I actually do believe in it.

(04:36):
We do need to save ourselves in this world. And working with nature is our best chance, I think.
Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing, Anne-Marie.
Abby, could you tell us a little bit more about your vision for this podcast
and where you're coming from?
Yeah, of course. Thank you for asking. Thank you for holding me here.

(04:59):
I am freshly graduated from university in Montreal, in Tio Tioke, in Muniang.
My family has lived near these waters for more than 400 years but my ancestry
is of colonial origin and i occupy this space very much as a settler very much

(05:23):
as a guest very much as a learner,
everything that i have ever learned i've learned through practice
and through those
kinds of of practices I've well those kinds of practices through
the wisdom I've been taught through the
opportunities to be curious and to explore through my
education in geographies in gender in sustainability I've learned how to listen

(05:51):
and how to seek connection and how to transform space with emotion to feel more connected.
And so I come to this space very much from those learnings.
I care tremendously about space making and place making and relationship.

(06:14):
And I care about feelings and emotions and embodiment and approaching the land
from the perspective of a student and holding a lot of compassion and a lot of,
i don't know if holding is the right word like humbling myself

(06:36):
to the world so that i can really be a vessel to be
filled up in that way i'm really grateful
for this space because i think that through the
practice of vocalizing all of these dreams and vocalizing
all of these teachings and learning from each other and from other really beautiful
members of our communities that we can speak sort of these worlds into existence

(06:56):
these like revolutionary worlds that we all dream of and that we sing ourselves
to sleep with and that we rise every morning to and that we pray to,
and i think that in speaking these worlds out loud in
community and in fostering this kind of caring relationship these worlds have

(07:17):
all the better chance of growing big and strong it sort of speaks to what ann
marie just said about supporting nature doing her best work we have to support
ourselves as well and support each other and i think that taking the time to.
Articulate ourselves in this kind of space and hold ourselves in community in this way,

(07:38):
allows for the creation of the kind of support system that is necessary for
radical change which I think we all are in need of and I believe in it and I'm.
Passionate about it and inspired by it.
And I can't wait to learn more from so many people and be challenged in so many new ways.

(08:04):
And I feel very honored to be a voice in this whirlpool. Thank you so much for sharing.
Just in this, I'm noticing our commonality
is really finding that that way
of reciprocal connection with nature and as
you were both speaking so I initially my

(08:26):
desire not just for the
podcast but in my career was conservation climate
change mitigation and wanting to do that through behavior change and having
a deeper understanding of human and relationship to nature and creating spaces
where people have a deeper relationship to land and to ecosystems because we

(08:50):
really only protect what we care about.
So I, as an immigrant to this land and a settler, have grown up building relationships
to land all over the world and being here...
Longer, it's created the space for me to realize that our connection to nature

(09:14):
is a spiritual one, not just one for survival and for the need of sustenance.
And that has been my motivation over the last few years.
I studied a master's of environment, focusing on community-led climate change adaptation.
I've worked in humanitarian aid and environmental assessment.

(09:34):
But at the core of of it, what's really important to me is supporting in nature,
having a voice and finding ways
for us to gather in community and find those ways of reciprocity and really
strengthen our own individual care for nature and wanting to preserve it and

(09:56):
take care of it and help it thrive and also helping each other in building those relationships.
And I think that this is a space where we can do that, where we can support
people in seeing through different lenses of why this is all important and giving it all a voice.
So, I'm really grateful to be here and I'm so grateful to you both and excited

(10:20):
for these different viewpoints as well as where this journey will take us and
all the incredible conversations that we have the potential to have.
Yeah, we're going to be talking about projects that Nature R&D is doing.
We're going to be talking about projects that our collaborators are doing,

(10:40):
bringing in special guests, talking about issues.
Climate anxiety, but also, yeah,
a keen, keen focus on where are the solutions happening and how can we fill
up the joy meter and the creativity meter and the kindness meter.

(11:01):
Sharing the good news what is happening in
the environmental field yeah yeah without denying the
bad absolutely bridging well we
hope you'll stick around with us we will continue posting
episodes as the creativity strikes hopefully once a month and feel free to reach
out to us if you have any questions thanks so much thank you thanks so much

(11:27):
for being on this journey with us and remember to click subscribe to be notified
when we release new podcast episodes.
Music.