One of the many things we love about CreativeMornings is the opportunity to explore different, interesting subjects through the lens of each month’s global theme. The concepts and conversations that our speakers come up with never fail to spark a new perspective.

For this month’s theme of Serendipity we’ve asked Erin Kelly – a Detroit-based designer and curator – to tell us a little about what’s fuels her creative fires.

Trained as a landscape architect, her work balances an interest in engaging abstract, sometimes tedious and bureaucratic systems with the immediacy of pleasure, learning and feedback that arises from making in real-time.

Erin’s work in Detroit over the last six years has tended to be between people, organizations and disciplines. Currently she serves as the Lead Landscape Strategist for the City of Detroit’s Planning and Development Department. Previous local collaborators include the Detroit Revitalization Fellows, the Detroit Collaborative Design Center and Detroit Future City.

Throughout this time and with the insights of a group of conspirators and specialists, Erin has been documenting sites of urban wildernesses in Detroit, to understand places and ecologies quietly produced through acts of quarantine and confinement.

CM Detroit: Don’t give it all away just yet but can you tell us in three words what you’ll be talking about on the 19th?

Erin: Immigrants*, Time & Magic (*plants)

CM Detroit: Why Detroit? What keeps you here?

Erin: Today Detroit does not feel like a choice but an under-examined habit. I am a sucker for potential and possibility and at one point in the past I think this is what kept me here—a mix between the people and the possibilities. Perhaps it laziness or distraction, or my tunnel-vision tendencies, but at some point, I stopped questioning Detroit as a choice of personal geography. Now it is simply the place where I live, and that allows me for the most part to pursue my pursuits and occasionally grow in some way, too.

CM Detroit: Since this month’s theme is Serendipity, do you think it is something that can be cultivated? Why or why not?

Erin: Absolutely— in my experience, the things that I pay attention to tend to grow. So maybe it is not serendipity itself that can be cultivated, but rather bringing attention to the conditions that already surround us—serendipity being one in the mix.

CM Detroit: What do you do when you feel “stuck”, creatively?

Erin: When I’m feeling stuck creatively, physical movement is my go-to—whether changing the physical environment I’m working in or taking a break to move my body in some way. The larger version of this is a voyage to another place—but sometimes there aren’t the six weeks available for a proper walkabout, and jumping jacks must suffice. Something I’m currently working through is the impulse to be disciplined and work within the time limits and parameters I’ve set, even if it’s a low energy or low-inspiration moment, as opposed to my impulse to change and move, to change environments or to change my own environment, sometimes (unconsciously even) to delay the inevitable, the uncomfortable starting of something.

CM Detroit: If you were not working on your current endeavors, what might you be doing instead?

Erin: Definitely swimming. I spent quite a bit of time last summer reading up on the social history of swimming, and I’m curious what it might mean for Detroit to become a more swimmable City. As a large metropolitan area perched on the shores of the Great Lakes, swimming to me feels like a form of literacy that should be a birthright here. For me as a personal practice it is an escape, a form of meditation. Recently I’ve become more interested in the spaces and places of swimming, and also why there are so few of these spaces in Detroit. There is a brilliant architect here in Detroit who has been working on this topic for a few years, Claudia Wigger, and she has me actively dreaming about the possibilities of now.

CM Detroit: What’s your favorite animated gif?
Erin: My favorite animated gifs usually involve a cat! Today I’m feeling like this: 

Looking for more on Erin before her talk this Friday? Give this article she wrote for UDM’s Dichotomy Journal a read or sign up here for her Botanical Tangents to learn more about how she works with Detroit residents to make, share and learn from projects that explore the benefits of urban wilds as a land management technique. 

You can hear Erin explore Serendipity further in person this week during her CreativeMornings talk at WeWork Detroit. Doors open at 8:30 for coffee, snacks, and mingling, and the talk will begin at 9:00am. As always, the event is free - just be sure to grab a ticket!