Workshop Overview
The workshop aimed to create an innovative and interactive way for participants to explore migration themes and express them through physical movements without using language.
Description of Activity
The activity centred around the migration story of the creative practitioner, African dancer, Aissatou Diop. It included telling Aissatou’s story to the participants and exploring themes that coincide with those emerging from the migrant interviews in the PERCEPTIONS project (i.e. loss, disorientation, faith, community and hope). Participants then learned dance movements and collaboratively improvised the ways of expressing these ideas through movement.
Outcomes
Outcomes of this activity included a collection of images and videos of the practitioner and participants conducting the workshops. These have been shared online with the general public as teaching materials, demonstrating how key migration-related themes can be re-interpreted in dance. The participants empathetically and physically interacted with migration themes with 91% of participants expressing their enjoyment of the workshop in their feedback forms and 86% agreed that their knowledge of migration improved after the workshop.
Impact
This activity brought together a migrant, their story and children from various economic, social and cultural backgrounds (particularly children living in areas of social deprivation and from hard-to-reach groups). The workshop is highly reproducible, only requiring an open, flat space, a template for retelling the migration story and a related activity animated by the practitioner. The workshop’s success draws both on the practitioner’s skills (as a trained dancer) and participatory techniques, which help recreate migration stories together with the participants (children) and highlight migration-related themes that are considered important. Based on the feedback completed by workshop participants, the workshop improved their empathy towards migrants, created an accessible learning environment and provided compelling learning opportunities for participating children with 77% of participants believed that this workshop assisted their understanding of migrant experiences. Tews, Michel and Noe (2017) suggest that enjoyment of the informal learning activity can have a positive effect on the learning process, which can be shown through over 50% of children expressing their enjoyment of this specific workshop and 86% believing they gained a deeper understanding of migrant’s experiences. The workshops broadened the range and appeal of learning opportunities, enabling participants to learn a form of African dance that they were not exposed to before. The workshops also gave a voice and platform for migrants to share their experiences with young people, focusing on changing attitudes to migrants and providing equal opportunities to younger people to learn about people seeking sanctuary in the UK. As part of the project’s civic mission, the workshops helped increase capacity for tolerance, changed perceptions and helped align to shared project outcomes for local people, organisations, such as Swansea City of Sanctuary and wider-policy priorities.
Children’s Feedback
“My favourite part was the dancing because she showed what she had to go through in actions.” (Hafod Primary Pupil)
“The dancing was the best part of the day.” (Ysgol Gyfun Gwyr Pupil)
“They were all nice, but my favourite was the dancing it was something new and cool that I learned.” (Hafod Primary Pupil)
Team Involved
Swansea University: Sergei Shubin and Harrison Rees
Creative Practitioner: Aissatou Diop