Learner Activities
In order to retain the idea of sensory elements in stakeholder engagement, these activities may be helpful. Think of the five senses – taste, smell, touch, hearing, sight. In all these class exercises, be judicious in expressing only what you can comfortably share with peers. We are not seeking inappropriate disclosure here, as the intent is not to engage in therapeutic discussion, but rather to share examples of how we remember or retain things through our senses, to help us think creatively about stakeholder engagement in community-engaged arts projects.
Class exercises (use one or more, about ten minutes each one) to demonstrate connections between senses, memory and experiences:
Is there a taste or smell that immediately takes you back to a time in your past?
- In À La Recherche du Temps Perdu, Marcel Proust famously remembers the taste of a madeleine (a kind of biscuit), and how it takes him back to an earlier time of his life in an immediate, direct way, beyond anything that words can describe (Wikipédia, 2022).
- Think pair (2 minutes), share (5 minutes)
- Whether pleasant or unpleasant, taste and smell memories are strong!
- Food is an important element in community arts engagement, and should be considered as a way to bring people together in low-risk environments, but be sure to research public health regulations around potluck meals since dishes may not be prepared in inspected and certified kitchens and food poisoning may be a risk. Public events with contributed food are generally forbidden. That said, invited folk, informed of the risks, may be permitted. Violating these regulations may void your insurance if something goes wrong!
Let’s think about touch:
- Do you have a favourite sweater that just feels right, or do you love getting between clean bedsheets after a bath?
- Do you calm yourself by stroking or cuddling your pet?
- Are there textures you can’t handle, like eating the skin of a peach?
- As before, think pair share, seeking one or two resonant examples.
- Touch is memorable, but perhaps less so than taste and smell.
How does music make you feel when you hear it?
- Do you get that “tingle,” the autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) reaction to music or sounds that you love?
- Are there instruments you love or hate, like bagpipes, for example? (Few are indifferent to them). What are other sounds you love or hate, and their associations?
- As before, think pair share, seeking one or two resonant examples.
- Being involved, making music may provide more engagement than hearing it does – immersion is best!
Finally, sight:
- Do you love bling, fireworks, intense colours?
- Do you respond emotionally to visual art? The original work by Damien Hirst, “For the love of God,” represented by this image, moved one of the authors to tears, quite unexpectedly, several years ago (Wikipedia, 2021).
- Conversely, do you avoid bright lights or highly stimulating environments?
- As before, think pair share, seeking one or two resonant examples.
- Sight is the “coolest” sense in terms of emotional recall.
Not a sense, per se, but movement also embeds experiences in the body:
- Learning styles theory suggests that some folk learn best by doing rather than being told, or reading about, or observing a phenomenon.
- Is there a time when movement, a procedural exercise of some kind rather than seeing/hearing new material, allowed you to retain information?
- As before, think pair share, seeking one or two resonant examples.
- “See one, do one, teach one” is a structure for this way of learning: First a demonstration, then an attempt at the task by the learner (embodying the learning), then an attempt by the learner to teach the task to someone else.
- Procedural or operational approaches to stakeholder engagement are also useful, like having folk make posters, puppets, or creating a dance piece about the topic of the project, as part of your initial engagement activity.
Facilitating and Explorations Through Prompts
What are prompts?
Prompts are questions/references used to incite action, thought, response and at times an activity. In a creative practice like community-engaged arts, prompts allow facilitators to explore deeper subtexts arriving in stakeholder conversations. The stakeholder/participant/learner can respond to the prompt in many ways. Kevin often uses a “wall of ideas” as “a tree of thoughts” where facilitation is an active exercise. The prompts can become thematic possibilities to explore further. Prompts encourage critical thinking and also insight, and can offer other variations on sequences, movements and gestures in dance/movement practices.
Here are some of Kevin’s most-used prompts:
- What would happen if…
- Can we explore…
- I am imagining…
- Can we spend some time on…
- How could we do…
- Let’s try…
- What would it look like if…
- I encourage you to…
What would some prompts be for you? We encourage you to write them out to “prompt” you to action:
- ________________________
- ________________________
- ________________________
- ________________________
- ________________________
- ________________________
The Use of Pronouns
How do you consider training your facilitators to make sure that they are in their practice using gender-inclusive language as part of working in community-engaged arts? What preparations need to occur prior to your projects? The authors recommend embedding the use of pronouns and gender inclusivity in your practices. Fontaine (2019), listed as a resource, provides useful background.
In conclusion:
The authors have found significant value, personally and professionally, in community-engaged arts practice, and wish the same for you, the reader(s). Relationships you form as you do this work can sustain you long, long after the project is over and the final reports are done. Decades later, folk you’ve met through this work can bring you into other arenas, and include you in their plans for projects that help them in subsequent roles they may play in other municipalities, careers, and vocations. The formal term is “social capital,” but the lived experience is one of love, support and continuity. We wish you all of this. Thank you for reading.