Nuit Blanche

Nuit Blanche 2025 | Mabelle Arts, Mabelle Park
My Role: Poem Seeker Lead

This year of Nuit Blanche at Mabel Park, I was the Poem Seeker Lead, part of a project exploring the theme of Signals. My role was to facilitate a participatory poetry experience that invited community members to reflect on their relationship with plants and nature. I walked around the park, engaging visitors in conversation and encouraging them to express their thoughts through poetry.

Many participants initially hesitated, saying, “I don’t know how to write poems.” I helped them see that poetry is simply meaningful self-expression, asking questions to draw out their experiences and co-creating poems with them. By the end of the night, participants felt delight and pride in their creations. Over the course of the evening, we collected a total of 31 poems, which were later recorded and played as a collective soundscape throughout the night, allowing the community’s voices to resonate throughout the park.

I approached the project with a focus on listening, questioning, and collaboration. Participants were invited to reflect on their experiences with plants and nature. Through open-ended questions, gentle prompts, and shared discussion, I guided participants to shape their responses into poems. For those unsure how to begin, I helped craft lines based on their own words and feelings, ensuring the poems remained authentic to their voice. The process was entirely participatory, each poem was co-created, and every participant had ownership over their expression.

One participant’s words “What you do is really important, we need more people like you” captured the essence of the project: creating spaces for shared reflection, dialogue, and imagination. Nuit Blanche, this year, reminded me why I am drawn to community arts: the joy of collaboration, the power of listening, and the transformative potential of everyday encounters with art and nature.