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Creative Language Practices:

Exploring Arts-based Practices and Translanguaging in Pedagogical Contexts and Beyond

Creative Language Practices is an initiative that started with a few important questions: What is the role of multilingualism and translanguaging in language teaching? How can teachers enrich their practice if they are to engage in creative practices and arts-based methods and methodologies to develop inclusive and rich learning environments? To answer these questions, our team of researchers, creative artists and teachers in Scotland, Vietnam and Kazakhstan have developed, trialed and implemented creative practices, arts-based activities and ideas based on translingual principles, theories of cultural and linguistic inclusion, as well as multimodal and multimedia approaches to language learning.  

We have designed our own methodology, engaged in the development of professional training programmes and TAGs (Teacher Activity Groups, following the British Council model) for language teachers and practitioners. We have applied our knowledge in different multilingual classrooms. All our work in the form of a Toolkit and blog posts are shared on this website with the wider community. We embrace a collaborative model that brings together expertise on multilingual learning and teaching, as well as arts-based methods and creative practices. We like to push our knowledge boundaries and are always open to explore how we understand and do language. 

ABOUT OUR WORK

As language researchers and practitioners, we believe in the creative potential of language and the important role of all our communicative resources. In a world where languages oftentimes become measures of someone’s identity, place and individual worth, we have a duty to support our learners of all linguistic backgrounds.

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We want to create inclusive environments where languages are respected, valued and made visible.

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We aim to inspire our learners to cherish all their communicative resources (e.g., using effectively words, images, body language, artistic and/or digital forms to reach one other).

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We strive to build positive attitudes towards languages in our classrooms and beyond.

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Drag the polaroids below to create your own translanguaging collage!  

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We aim to break walls that separate languages and language users because we have much more to learn from each others’ sounds, voices, words, images, moves, songs...

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Where it all started...

Creative Language Practices started in Glasgow with a series of workshops. Ten teachers from the Glasgow area together with two researchers from the University of Glasgow and four creative practitioners have worked together to explore creative practices and engage with the principles of translanguaging. The project has now grown internationally and our Toolkit has become richer with contributions from colleagues and partners from VietNam, Kazakhstan and Canada.

 

While developed in the context of teachers’ work in their respective schools, we believe that many of our resources can be used and applied in other contexts of language teaching and learning. If you are interested in finding out more about these workshops, feel free to contact us.

PARTNERS

Our work has been supported and funded by the British Council (through the TAGs projects scheme and via ELTRA funding), Glasgow Knowledge Exchange Fund (University of Glasgow), Glasgow City Council (EAL Unit, under the generous guidance of Maria Walker), and ESRC Impact Acceleration Account.

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