MICHAËL VIDON
Poet, Teacher, Spoken Word Educator
Michaël Rosen
Michaël 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.
Liz Cook
KS2 Teacher
Europa School
As I sat in the multilingual poetry workshop and saw lower ability and dyslexic children dipping confidently and creatively into their home and school languages, I got that magic feeling of « this is what learning is really about ».
Vicky Macleroy
Professor of Language and Literacy
Head of MA Children's Literature
Head of Centre for Language, Culture and Learning
Goldsmiths University of London
Gold
Michael Vidon has made an invaluable contribution to the global Critical Connections Project for the past 3 years. He is a talented and inspiring bilingual poet educator who is able to devise and conduct multilingual poetry workshops across languages and countries.
Michael Vidon devised both online and hybrid multilingual poetry workshops for the Critical Connections Film Festivals in June 2021, 2022, and 2023. He has supported young participants to experiment with writing bi- and multi-lingual poetry on the project theme of ‘Our Planet’.
He produced engaging resources and activities and was able to work with the wide age range of students on the project (6 -18 years old) and across 10 project countries (Australia, Cyprus, England, Egypt, Germany, India, Italy, Malaysia, Taiwan and Turkey). There are over 45 languages included in the films of the Critical Connections Project and Michael Vidon created activities to encourage students to bring in all their languages to their poetry writing and performances.
In 2023, he worked with over 100 students to experiment and create multilingual poetry and the students loved the experience.