Imagining health equity through Through Creativity
EPiSODE 5:
Imagine what it’s like to wake up every day feeling like your body’s battery is stuck at 15%.
In this episode of The Imagine Podcast, host Jenn Grant sits down with one of her oldest friends, artist and songwriter Andrew Sisk, to talk about his two-and-a-half-year journey with long COVID.
Andrew speaks to his experiences of chronic pain, dizziness, brain fog, and a nervous system that
can’t keep up. He shares the frustrating search for medical answers, the reality of long COVID clinics, and why pacing, rest, and managing even the smallest forms of exertion are crucial.
Jenn and Andrew also revisit their early days at Camp Rotary, reflect on the dignity of disabled lives, and explore how creativity—through music, poetry, meditation, and even Chinese herbal medicine—have helped him secure a fragile new balance.
A compassionate listen for anyone living with chronic illness or loving someone who is.
Andrew Sisk is a Montreal-based composer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who creates original music for film and television. Raised in rural New Brunswick, he spent years as a touring musician in several Canadian bands before moving into composition and education. His songwriting was celebrated on the tribute album We Have the Same Lights Overhead, released by the Acadian Embassy label and featuring artists including Jenn Grant, Jon McKiel, and Michael Feuerstack. He and Jenn have been close friends for more than two decades.
EPiSODE 6:
Every healed world begins with a story—this one begins on Mi’kmaq land in Millbrook First Nation.
In this episode of The Imagine Podcast, host Jenn Grant is joined by Mi’kmaw artist, musician, writer, and storyteller Alan Syliboy.
Alan shares stories of growing up on a small reserve where everyone knew each other, and Mi’kmaq was his first language—until it was banned in his Catholic school and even in his home. He shares how that loss shaped him, and how he’s been working ever since to reclaim language, story, and imagery through his art. He speaks to the influence of Shirley Bear and his discovery of Mi’kmaq petroglyphs as a visual language. Jenn and Alan explore his children’s books, his band The Thundermakers, the Daily Drum project on social media, and his public studio in Truro as a community learning space.
Together, they imagine how art, story, and sound can help reclaim what was once silenced. This is an episode about art as healing, narrative reclamation, and the joy of reclaiming what was once silenced — seeing Mi’kmaw stories in children’s hands.
Alan Syliboy is a Mi’kmaw artist, author, and musician from Millbrook First Nation, Nova Scotia, born in 1952. His visual style draws heavily on Mi’kmaw petroglyph traditions, particularly the carvings found at Kejimkujik National Park, a body of imagery he began adapting into his own artistic language after being mentored by Wolastoqiyik artist Shirley Bear in the 1970s. Alan is the author of several children’s books, including The Thundermaker, and leads the award-winning band Alan Syliboy & The Thundermakers, which has won Music Nova Scotia’s Indigenous Artist of the Year award and received multiple East Coast Music Award nominations. He continues to live in Millbrook First Nation, with his studio based in nearby Truro.
