Inquiry through our skin

In April 2019 we facilitated together a workshop in an ESREA Spring School. The workshop addressed issues of embodiment in research and educational settings. It was the first time that we designed and facilitated a workshop together. We both felt busy and jumping from one commitment to another at the time, as many researchers and workers in uncertain times do. So, after discussing our ideas for the activities of the workshop, we decided to bring the creative material and refine the details and schedule on the day. This worked incredibly well for us. We quickly found a meeting point, assigned roles to one or the other for different activities, and situated the activities in the two conference rooms we could use. The compositional workshop had three moments. (1) After reading a leaflet about an artwork that was on show in the city center, we lead a sensitizing activity in pairs about the skin, and elicited words from the room about the object of inquiry of each pair. (2) Then we moved to the other room for a biographical poetic activity, individual and then shared, that produced new compositional texts and knowledge. (3) The texts were read aloud, and a collective artwork created with a selection of sentences from the texts.