Wade in the Water: Storytelling as Cultivation of Openness

• In Event: 73.060 - Roundtable Session 31
  In Roundtable Session: 73.060-5 - Poetry and Narrative in Education

Abstract

Through the research-creation project Wade in the Water, we examine the pedagogical potential for place-based, community engaged knowledge creation. Wade in the Water is a participatory community performance within Montreal’s Nuit Blanche cultural crawl. Existing in the borderlands and in-between spaces of art making, pedagogy, and research, Wade in the Water combines university and local urban communities in creative collaboration. We explore participatory performance both for enabling the affective, public exchange of memories, and pedagogical development of teacher candidates from McGill University. Combining theater practices, relational art, urban café culture and research methods, (a/r/tography and narrative inquiry), Wade in the Water emerges as an immersive, interpersonal space where collective lived experiences of water surface through playful, improvisational storytelling.

Authors

• Laurel Marie Hart, Concordia University

• Mindy Roberta Carter, McGill University