Multilingual Performance Project: Midlands launch and teacher workshop
On Thursday, 8 March the Creative Multilingualism team hosted the first launch event for the Multilingual Performance Project (MPP) in the Midlands.
Languages teachers came together at Birmingham Repertory Theatre to find out more about the project and to take part in a drama workshop. There was a wide range represented from across primary and secondary schools, including teachers of French, Spanish, German and Punjabi from schools which also teach Russian, Greek, Urdu and Italian.
During our workshop, led by Birmingham-based theatre practitioner Holly Bateman, the teachers were introduced to fun drama games and theatre exercises which can be easily adapted to the language classroom. Highlights for the group included acting out various illness and injuries they had suffered in past lives, creating statues of objects, and playing an adapted version of Would I Lie to You?
We had a fantastic time meeting the teachers – and they enjoyed it too. One said that at first they were unsure how to make performance part of their language teaching with primary children, but by the end of the session had a good collection of ideas they were ready to try out in school. Another praised the activities for helping to break down barriers including learners’ under-confidence and different abilities. We certainly all went away really energised about the potential of the project which aims to encourage and enable languages teachers to use more performance and creative, artistic approaches in their language teaching and in school life in general.
I can’t wait to take events like this to other towns and cities, continuing to grow the MPP network of teachers who are keen to celebrate the creative potential of multilingualism!
If you are interested in being a part of the Multilingual Performance Project and you would like to find out more, please email daniel.tyler-mctighe@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.
Where next?
Slanguages: how artists are getting creative with languages