Lindsay Dawn Dobbin is a Kanien'kehá:ka–Acadian–Irish–Scottish water protector, sound artist, drummer, whale listener, poet, educator and lifelong learner who gratefully lives and creates in Wabanaki along the Bay of Fundy. Born on the Kennebecasis River, a tributary of Wolastoq ("the beautiful river"), they were raised in a wetland estuary where freshwater flowing from the Northern Appalachia meets the saltwater of the world's highest tides. They have also spent significant time living North of the 60th parallel.
Dawn’s relational and place-responsive practice is guided by curiosity rather than form—the way of water. They are committed to creative paths that honour the ever-changing thresholds between land and sea, embracing an emergent (and submergent) ethics of improvisation rooted in kinship, living processes, deep listening, play and mutual flourishing. Their participatory art experiences invite re-membrance, shared movement and connection through the wonder of sound.
At the heart of Dawn’s practice is the drum—a vibrational instrument through which their genre-fluid, transdisciplinary work unfolds in relation to bodies, ecologies and temporalities. With music as their friend and stars as their devotion, Dawn follows tidal and cyclical rhythms as pathways to creative sovereignty—co-weaving connection, care and survival within shapeshifting worlds.
A committed collaborator, facilitator and steward of creative process, Dawn has co-created with artists, scientists, Elders, youth and the more-than-human—primarily where they live within the traditional, unceded territories of the Wolastoqiyik, Mi’kmaq and Peskotomuhkati, as well as across Turtle Island. Attuned to aural transmission, bioacoustic forms of communication and analogue, terrestrial sound technologies, Dawn explores the often indescribable yet intimately felt resonances among sound, material and the environments from which they emerge. Guided by principles of experimental pedagogy and healing justice, Dawn approaches creative practice as a relational site of ritual, collective care and playful worlding.
Their collaborative work has included improvising music with constellations of human and more-than-human beings; designing and facilitating sound art and music programs for children, including children with disabilities; creating place- and time-responsive radio transmissions; composing and recording sound for film, dance and performance; and curating interdisciplinary art projects and exhibitions rooted in land- and water-based pedagogy, including Nocturne: Atlantic Canada’s largest contemporary art festival. They are also conducting sound-based research in partnership with water scientists and traditional, place-based water knowledge holders, exploring ecological and acoustic knowledge systems. Dawn’s work has been shared nationally and internationally. They are the recipient of the Arts Nova Scotia Emerging Artist Recognition Award (2019) and the Robert Fleming Prize (2021), awarded annually by the Canada Council for the Arts to an emerging composer in Canada.
Dawn is a relationally taught creative whose musical and artistic education has largely unfolded through cultural and community-based transmission, collaboration and making way together. Their creative life is grounded in an understanding of music as a living current—carried, remembered and renewed through relationships. They approach creativity as an ongoing process of learning and reciprocity, cultivating an attentiveness to the shared beingness, resonance and resilience of meeting waters. This orientation is also a gesture of thanks for the teachings, sanctuaries, lineages, generosity and care shared by the many human and more-than-human beings who continue to shape their life. Dawn's work is informed by a family history rooted in rural livelihoods and skilled trades, where craft, storytelling and intimate knowledge of the tangible were practices of care, stewardship and continuity. Growing up alongside animals as kin, they developed an early sensitivity to the interdependence of living beings and continue to share much of their life with creatures big and small. Extending these familial and creative lineages, Dawn's work tends to the weavings of humans, plants, animals and the elemental, listening beneath the surface for the currents of connection within the cosmic commons of sound.
Lindsay Dawn Dobbin gratefully acknowledges the support of:
