Abstract Summary
Considering the complex co-dependence of elements that converge in and around creative methods and practices at a digital storytelling project site in Barcelona, we draw on the notion of ecology as it has been developed in sociocultural language and education research to consider the emerging affordances for learning.
Abstract :
In the field of Applied Linguistics, there is increasing interest in creativity and the arts – in a broad sense – as method for researching language and communication, and as communicative practice (Bradley & Harvey, forthcoming). While the affordances of the arts for understanding or affording different types of learning is often an implicit focus of this emergent strand of Applied Linguistics, the intersection between language, learning and the arts has so far been under-researched and theorized. This paper sets out from the empirical basis of data collected at a Global StoryBridges site in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (Spain) in which different creative practices come into play. GSB involves the creative production of digital stories by the young participants which are then shared and discussed with youth at other sites. At the Spanish site, creative practices also serve as an ethnographic research method and as a resource for facilitating group cohesion and participation in the production of the digital stories. Considering the complex co-dependence of elements – mediational tools and artifacts, roles and identities, language/s, histories, space, time, activities, etc. – that converge in and around these creative methods and practices, we draw on the notion of ecology as it has been developed in sociocultural language and education research (e.g. Van Lier, 2008) to consider the emerging affordances for learning.
Bradley, J. & Harvey, L. (forthcoming). Creative inquiry in applied linguistics: researching language and communication through visual and performing arts. In Wright, C., Harvey, L. & Simpson, J. (eds.), Edited collection from the 50th Anniversary Meeting of the British Association for Applied Linguistics. York: White Rose University Press.
Van Lier, L. (2008). The ecology of language learning and sociocultural theory. In N. H. Hornberger (ed.), Encyclopedia of language and education. Boston, MA: Springer.
