Community Arts Zone: Where Community Meets Composition

• In Event: Cosmopolitan Literacies: Examining the Transnational Turn in Research and Pedagogy

Abstract

Overview and Purpose: This presentation examines how youth compose across modes such as visuals, sounds, and moving images by adopting arts-based methodologies across a variety of contexts. The presentation will explore a two-year SSHRC-funded project that applies arts-based methods in secondary English classrooms. The project connects literacy practices with the notion of embodiment and affect (Leander & Boldt, 2013) to highlight how multimodality and the arts may be central to pedagogies that connect individuals across boundaries.

Theoretical Framework: Gunther Kress (2010) argued that “texts are always multimodal,” claiming that the orchestration of modes includes “the mutual interdependence and the 'semiotic harmony' of such ensembles” (p. 157). This presentation builds upon this mutual dependence on modes during composition to expand our notions of writing and more conventional notions of writing practices. Merging the work of Brian Street (2010) and Gunther Kress (2010), I will theorize the tacit practices and competencies with modes that leads to semiotic harmony.

Data Sources and Methods: In the first of a two-year multi-sited research project taking place in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, high school students will work with community artists to multimodally compose a series of texts and multimodal assignments. For the presentation, I will present three of the arts-based projects and the participatory methods adopted to work with youth.

Findings: Observational and interview data suggest already that youth shift seamlessly among a variety of modalities as they engage in a number of practices. Such movement across modes highlights an increasing need to expand definitions of literacy.

Significance: The presentation addresses a need in research and theory to merge an account of the social practices used to work with modes of expression and representation coupled with deeper understandings about the nuances of semiotic work (Kress & Street, 2006) and how notions of design map onto more traditional concepts about writing. It also explores how multimodality may be employed in a participatory transnational context in order to cultivate a cosmopolitan ethos and how the arts may mediate difference.

Author

• Jennifer Rowsell, Brock University