Trauma-informed Performative Language Practice: The Sorgente study

PLEASE NOTE THE START TIME, we are starting an hour later than our usual webinars to allow for our presenter joining us from Dublin.

Erika's work in the Arts is remarkable for its breadth. Trained as a dancer, actor and musician, she is also an expert not only in pedagogy, but also embodied creative practice for wellbeing, and a leader in the field of research outputs being in themselves artworks.

Erika will introduce us to her arts-based research project, Sorgente: Performative Language Learning with Refugees and Migrants, conducted with three groups of young people in Ireland and Italy.

The project engaged participants in a series of language workshops that encompassed actor voice training, improvisation, embodied grammar, process music and process drama.

The resulting study was guided by:

the scope of embodied research methods in arts-based methodology
the relationship between motivation to belong and additional language learning through the arts
how to support an ‘ethical imagination’ in practitioners working with refugees and migrants.

An arts-based elaboration of the key themes that arose led to the creation of a data poem, Shades of Belonging, written collectively by the team and incorporating the participants’ voices. Findings were also interpreted through the lens of a painting. This poetic and pictorial representation culminated in significant assertions about trauma-informed performative language practice, referred to as Painting the Shades Between Safety and Bravery.

Dr Erika Piazzoli is an Associate Professor in Arts Education at the School of Education, Trinity College Dublin, and the Director of the Arts Education Research Group (AERG). She has practiced dance (Butoh), actor voice training (Linklater) and music (cello) for more than fifteen years, combining her arts experience with an academic background in drama.