Museum Pedagogies and Language Learning in Finds Stories 

In Finds Stories we employed performing arts, cultural heritage in education, and Project Based Language Learning (PBLL) in the inspiring terrain of the museums.  The amalgama of these disciplines brought to life the ‘Creative Object Biography’ (COB) approach. COB concentrates on involving contemporary art not in terms of aesthetics, but as a tool of exploring and communicating alternative narratives, imageries, and modes of presentation that can stimulate a multi-sensory critical engagement with objects, phenomena, and ideas, as they are conceptualised in the present experiments with a different method of connecting with the materiality of the past, without focusing on getting a specific explanatory construct across. COB reconstructs the object itineraries with the use of creative arts, and objects narratives, become repurposed and produce new imageries. COB functions as a vehicle for multiplying the impact of discussions on materiality and promotes inclusivity, by encompassing marginalised voices and groups.

In Finds Stories professional artists interpreted the recorded objects while inspired by the objects’ itineraries and biographies. Dance, choreography, improvisation, film making, documentary, painting, and collage were some of the creative arts that have been applied to understand, comprehend, and interpret the target objects. The conception has emerged as a natural response to the educators’ need for resources, tools, and strategies that are purposefully designed for multicultural classrooms with second language learners who are cautious of the social context of the host community and seek for inclusion. Arts and cultural heritage education have great potential for encouraging greater involvement, innovation, and creativity in learning (Gruber 2009); and as Piazzoli and Schewe remind us (2023: 75) “our world urgently needs creative solutions to the very challenging problems we are facing in the 21st century, for example, in the context of migration and climate change”. Within the realm of arts in education, drama or “performative teaching and learning” (Schewe 2013) has an important role to play. As regards the acquisition of a second language, performative learning may have multiple benefits (see for example Piazzoli 2018). Moreover, the creation of non-judgmental spaces in which to experiment with language that drama practitioners strive for (Piazzoli at al. 2023) provides ample opportunities for authentic language use and negotiation of meaning. In addition, intercultural skills can be enhanced by stepping into someone else’s shoes and looking at the world form another perspective. Language learning contributes to gaining more self-confidence, establishing deeper and more significant relationships with the population of the host country, and increasing the number of professional opportunities (Magos & Margaroni, 2018).

There is a two-way relationship between performative approaches to language learning and Heritage Education. On the one hand, tangible or intangible heritage assets may constitute the inspiration for drama work, for ex- ample being the pretext for a process drama story. At the same time the asset can be explored in greater depth thanks to the drama activities. In other words, in the same way as knowledge of disciplinary subjects is acquired through the medium of a foreign language in Project Based Language Learning (PBLL), there may be a dual focus on learning about heritage and learning a language. The added value of performative approaches is that rather than simply finding out about heritage, the learners themselves embody that heritage, be it an artwork, a song or an episode from the history of an important landmark. In such a way, the asset becomes not only more engaging and memorable but is experienced directly by learners, thus fostering a true sense of ownership. All these benefits from combining performing arts and language learning are enhanced when an approach like COB takes place in the hospitable space of a museum, as museums are no longer simply repositories of artefacts and authority, but “a place for somebody” (Karamanov 2023). Museums offer an open cultural dialogue and interaction with art objects and this is the reason the Finds Story case studies were implemented in museums with diverse population of learners including both primary and secondary school students.

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