Sorgente Research Report: The Irish Case Studies

This report reflects on two case studies conducted within a community-based research and arts engagement programme, Sorgente: Engaging asylum seekers, refugees and their teachers in performative language pedagogy. This programme was a partnership between researchers from the School of Education, Trinity College Dublin, and two services within the City of Dublin Education and Training Board (CDETB), the Migrant Access Programme and Youthreach, engaging young people of migrant and refugee backgrounds in language workshops based on creative arts practice. The programme was underpinned by a robust research process conducted by researchers from Trinity College Dublin, along with international researchers and local community practitioners. The purpose of the report is to provide a transparent account of the data analysis process, generation of the research themes and interpretation of the findings. This report offers a reflexive account of two arts-based case studies. Each case study involved the design and facilitation of a 16-hour language programme based on actor voice training, improvisation, process music, embodied grammar and process drama. The research process was informed by a qualitative case study methodology through arts-based methods (Leavy, 2017). The analysis followed a reflexive thematic analysis approach (Braun & Clarke, 2021) and was constructed through a first and second-cycle coding process for theming the data (Saldaña, 2022). Nine themes were generated, organised around three strands in line with the research questions of the study: embodied research methods, belonging, and the ethical imagination. The nine themes were: 1) Zine-making as a catalyst to reflect on shared values; 2) Language portraits as multilingual activators; 3) Gesture drawing as a tool to activate collective embodied knowing; 4) Belonging as feeling safe in translanguaging; 5) Belonging as laughing together in creative collaboration; 6) Belonging as being committed to learning; 7) The ethical imagination as feeling at home at the threshold; 8) The ethical imagination as trauma-informed performative language practice; 9) The ethical imagination as co-presence in brave spaces.