Quinn is an artist, activist and experimental nature therapy guide who invites people to reconnect with nearby nature using their senses and imaginations.

Planet Detroit is pleased to announce that Bridget Quinn of the A.W.E. Society will be joining us for a Community Engagement Artist Residency! 

Bridget Quinn is an artist, activist, and experimental nature therapy guide who invites people to reconnect with nearby nature using their senses and imaginations.

Using participatory performance, she instigates play within the borderlands between the city and nature, between the psyche and the environment–realms that are not distinct but instead are completely interwoven.

Her work is concerned with rediscovering everyday landscapes as multi-species commons and the sites of reciprocal healing between self, community and environment. Bridget concerns herself with fostering cultures of reciprocity and care through environmental justice activism and mutual aid. She lives and gardens in Warren.

Bridget’s residency with Planet Detroit will start with a series of weekly Sidewalk Botany posts that help us make friends with the nearby weeds– our often overlooked companions.

She will also continue a series of invitations to reconnect with nearby nature called Therapeutic Edgelands. Some of these participatory invitations will encourage you to explore specific places in Metro Detroit with your senses and imaginations, and others will invite you to experience nearby nature in novel ways. 

We first got to know Bridget’s art when we learned about The Resonant Underbelly of Suburbia, a series of performances where she invited people to sing in stormwater tunnels.

Over the course of these events, Quinn discovered an oil sheen which was traced back to an industrial building whose sewage line was incorrectly connected to the Red Run Drain in Warren. The connection was reported to the county drain commissioner. This work shows how ordinary citizens create opportunities for healing when we become engaged with the wilds nearby.

Learn more about Quinn here.