Express Yourself with Art Lingual

February was a jam packed month, with the Refugee Week Conference and our first Express Yourself workshop without the creators Nick, Tiffany, and Franzi.

Back in 2016, Art Lingual teamed up with the heads of the UCL STAR (Student Action for Refugees) chapter to help run a drama and debate workshop called Express Yourself. Our first workshop with them was absolutely fantastic, and we stayed with the project in order to help make sure the programme remained fruitful and sustainable.

As with all things at university, the leaders of UCL STAR changed as students went off to graduate and work elsewhere. As the only group of people still around that had actually ran the workshop before, we needed to work with the new leaders to assist them with the brilliant workshop Nick had left behind. This wasn't without a few of Art Lingual's classic edits, such as the addition of contingency plans.

One of the biggest hurdles with these workshops, as it is with any ESL focused workshop, is that you can get a wide range of English language skills. With our MA Applied Theatre backgrounds, we are always aware of the need for accessibility. The need to engage every participant, on some level. So, we took Nick's great plan and we added a few contingencies, variations of the activities that could be used with those whose English is still quite basic. After all, these workshops are all about improving your english, no matter what level you're at!

With that in mind, we helped run Nick's Express Yourself workshop, with a focus on drama. And it went brilliantly. We had a few bumps along the way, mainly participants showing up quite late. But that was because people kept getting lost! If you've ever been to the UCL campus, you know how confusing and large it all is.

The workshop went through a series of drama games that would require using your English language skills. Some personal highlights for me:

The group playing 'Make the Scene' where in which they imagined different aspects of a cinema viewing! Can you see a projector? A hungry viewer? A chatty viewer?

Participants and facilitators paired off to talk about why they chose a certain object from the random collection on the table. See anything interesting? A tiny cactus, per chance? Or a tiny teddy bear?

Every workshop we run gives us new insight and teaches us valuable lessons. Our workshop with UCL STAR in February was not only enlightening but also, just plain fun. And that's the best kind of learning.

We hope everyone involved had as much fun as we did and we can't wait to see what they all do next!

​- Sierra