International Students' Place-Making Practices: Film and the Mapping of Place Through Walking

• In Event: 63.054 - Mapping A/r/tography: Walking for Place-Conscious Pedagogies of Practice

Abstract

Objectives or purposes:
The purpose of this presentation is to discuss ongoing research that explores international students’ engagement with filmmaking during their routine walking as a participatory, embodied, and sensory place making practice. This work draws on the pedagogic implications of movement through students’ routine paths. It explores how the filmic mapping of students’ daily routine of movement to and from campus as well as others sites of importance creates a unique process and practice of place making for students in their first years of university. Further, this work explores artistic practices with students who do not identify as practicing artists, but create and edit their own films as a process of embodied inquiry of their new geographic location as an international student.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework:
The methodological framework draws primarily from a/r/tographical theory (Irwin, 2006; Irwin, 2013) but further explores research related to exploration of local environments for creative practice (Kellman, 1998), international students’ construction of place (Stevenson, 2017), walking methodologies (Cutcher, Rousell, & Cutter-Mackenzie, 2015; Springgay & Truman (2017). Drawing on these works, the student films of walking routine paths are explored as a creative practice in an embodied space of meaning making.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials:
Participant films and interview sessions will be discussed to explore processes of meaning making that the students performed.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view:
The results are still very much in progress, but initial interviews indicate that students identify displacement and loneliness as connected to their current place perpetuating isolation from their community. The presenter will show vignettes of student films and will discuss the ways that the filmmaking allowed students to explore displacement while forming an alternate relationship to place.

Scholarly Significance:
This topic is extremely relevant as international student enrollment continues to increase in post-secondary institutions in both the United States and Canada. The use of artistic practices has an important history of enabling a deeper connection to place through an embodied exploration. Asher (2000) for example explored the ways that K-12 international students developed a deeper connection to their Bronx neighborhood through observational sketching and photography. These explorations allowed students to express memories of place and to develop a closer to connection to their new home. Sharma (2017) argues art practice and place making practices fosters “dialogic and participatory communities outside of traditional classroom settings” (p. 170). This presentation provides a unique opportunity for those working with post-secondary students, particularly international students to explore how filmmaking as an artistic form of inquiry enabled place-making practices and embodied modes of dialogue for meaning-making.

Author

• Adrienne Boulton, Kwantlen Polytechnic University