In this paper we consider the theoretical affordances of producing collaborative research into language diversity with young people using the creative arts. We consider a project, 'Multilingual Streets', which focuses on linguistic landscapes. We suggest that the arts offer new lenses to understand the lived experience of multilingualism.
Collaboration, or 'co-production', with creative practitioners at different stages of the research process is increasing across applied linguistics. But what would a shared theory of arts practice with applied linguistics look like in the context of co-produced research? In this paper, we use our experiences of research and public engagement in formal and informal educational settings to explore the idea of art education as communicative repertoire. This idea foregrounds and builds on our existing knowledge of artmaking with groups of participants to support non-linear processes of visualising research, and uses examples from projects stemming from research in language and communication - ‘LangScape Curators’ and ‘Multilingual Streets’ - which focus on young people’s understandings of everyday multilingual practices using arts-based methods to synthesise and analyse linguistic landscape data (Bradley et al., 2018). This use of creative methods aims to reflect dynamic multilingual processes through which participants draw from their communicative repertoires to communicate and make meaning. Although situated primarily at the intersection of Applied Linguistics and Modern Languages, we argue that our work also has important implications for the field of arts education. In theorising arts education through collaborative work within Applied Linguistics, we expand beyond this bricolage of methods towards a new hybrid methodology. In so doing, we demonstrate new opportunities for developing and exploring research questions with participants, while productively problematising the idea of co-production. Our use of creative inquiry in Applied Linguistics also extends to the ways in which traditional research outputs can be performed and disseminated through artistic products. Finally, we set out some tentative points for how this creative turn might continue to develop, both methodologically and theoretically. Bradley, J., Moore, E., Simpson, J. & Atkinson, L. 2018. Translanguaging space and creative activity: Theorising collaborative arts-based learning. Language and Intercultural Communication, 18(1), pp.54-73.
