We started the first workshop of the Creative Practices: Exploring Translanguaging Research in Pedagogical Contexts and Beyond project playing with toys borrowed from a child’s drawer. Erasers, Lego blocks, tiny boxes and metal balls, transformers, miniature cars, keys, strings… what wasn’t there… Whilst doing it, we tried to imagine language as a physical object and considered the metaphors used to describe it.
This introductory activity engaged us to think out of the box. In fact, we started with a box and ended up with the metaphors that we use whenever we speak about our languages. Language as a container, language as a fluid, language as a tool — all these metaphors made their way onto the table via real objects. Looking at language in this way made us think more carefully about what we’re truly saying when we’re saying: I use my language… I have a language, My languages are… (more on this activity will be included in the upcoming Resources section of our website).
In the second part of the workshop, we discussed the concept of translanguaging and recalled our own experiences of it. Examples of translanguaging taken from Monika Szydłowska’s watercolour drawings in her online series, On Emigration, and a book, Do you miss your country?, became an inspiration for the creation of translanguaging comics in which we recorded situations from our everyday life and work. Dobrochna took us through the journey of taking a lived language experience and giving it a face, a scene, a context. The multimodal nature of this activity enabled all participants to embrace their creativity and draw their translanguaging moments out. The technique and process involved in this exercise led us to create an entire canvas of moments that represented “us” and what we have lived in various spaces.
