MICHAËL VIDON
Poet, Teacher, Spoken Word Educator
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Creative Writing and Performance Teaching
I deliver workshops in a range of setting formal and informal including primary, secondary, university, youth clubs, community groups, and adult courses.
Examples of past work here.
It's Raining Lines and Tongues
Multilingual Creative Writing Workshop
What they say about it:
It's Raining Lines and Tongues aims at celebrating home languages at school, developing children's meta-linguistic skills and growing their confidence as multilingual writers. Through looking at sayings and expressions, they will investigate the metaphorical worlds of different languages. The workshops are also valuable for children that only speak English as they can draw from the wealth of the English language.
The workshop is targeting upper key stage 2 and key stage 3 students. In 2.5 hours, groups of 4 or 5 pupils can put together a piece and work on performance. If the students have had time to think about idioms in their language beforehand, the work produced is often more interesting: they will be invited to read a letter from the leader and listen to poems from students from other schools.
During the workshop, the French bilingual leader will perform a few of his own poems and discuss with students how people use metaphors every day without realising. We are all poets and we don't know it. After a few physical and drawing warm ups, the students will brainstorm sayings in English or other languages and will write performance poems taking the idioms literally drawing on their own experience.
Podcast commissioned by Apples and Snakes for Home Cooking
Michael Rosen, under whose guidance I have developed the workshops at Goldsmiths, University of London:
āMichaĆ«l Vidon is a challenging, creative person who starts fires in people's minds. He sparks off thoughts and ideas so that other people can think and create new things. Sometimes he uses his own poetry, sometimes he plays with the language around and in us. So his poems aren't end-points; they are mid-points: the poems are the result of his energetic thoughts and experiences and the triggers for new creations by others. This is good for poetry and good for life.ā
Ali Campbell, at Queen Mary, University of London for a workshop as part of the Globe Road International Poetry Festival:
ā Great workshop, immersive and fascinatingā
Year 5 Teachers:
āInteresting approach that I was not used to, good to watchā
āgreat poems from the children, well done!ā
Year 5 pupil:
āI learnt that there are idioms are not the same in different languages even though they mean the same thing. For example, in
French, it costs the eyes of the head, in English, an arm and a leg and in Bengali , a hand and a leg".
This podcast results from the work I have done in R edlands Primary School performing my poems, running multilingual poetry workshops and interviewing children and teachers on their relationships with languages at home and at school.
I have worked with a Year 5 class and a Year 6 class on idioms they have heard in English and home languages. This was the start of a reflection on the status of home languages at home and in schools. I have collected some of the poems produced by the children as well as their thoughts and shared some of my poems.
References:
- PĆ©rez Firmat, G, (1995) Bingual Blues. Bilingual Press:Tempe
- Translators in Schools with which I did a CPD
- Multilingual Digital Storytelling Project
- Kenner, C. and al (2008) Bilingual Learning for second and third generation children. Language, Culture and Curriculum 21 (2), 120-137 (2008)
What they said:
"I learnt that you can use normal words but different sounds and that it can be about anything. I like poetry now." Year 5 pupil
"Now I know how to present my work neatly instead of mumbling." Year 4 pupil
"Your visit drastically changed my views of poems in a very positive way. Now I also feel much more comfortable writing and performing my poems and stories." Year 5 pupil
"They really enjoyed it and you made a BIG impression on them!", Emma Rawlinson, KS2 Teacher, Southcote Primary School