Padua offers a process drama workshop to foster intercultural communication

The University of Padua invites academic and administrative staff members of the Arqus universities to a process drama workshop to foster intercultural communication. The workshop will take place online on 29th April from 14:30 to 17:00 (CEST).

Process drama is a performative approach whereby facilitators and participants co-construct a story. The aim is not to create a performance for public viewing or a final product. Instead, learners take part in a series of drama activities that remain within the space of the classroom. Process drama has been used in a variety of educational contexts, including that of language learning. In this workshop it will be used as a means of exploring intercultural competence and communication. The participants will step into someone else’s shoes and view the world from a different perspective. By going in and out of a number of different roles, participants will reflect on the challenges of interaction with people from different cultural backgrounds, and also on the strengths of drama as a tool to facilitate intercultural dialogue and understanding. To conclude with the words of Erika Piazzoli: “In process drama, we are not trying to find a happy ending. We are not trying to fix anything. We are considering a given issue from multiple viewpoints”.

There are no prerequisites for this course, but participants are asked to join in with their microphone and computer camera on. The workshop is free of charge for staff members of the Arqus Alliance partner universities.

The workshop will be led by Fiona Dalziel (Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies), Angela Soldà (Department of Information Engineering) and Denada Dedja (Third Mission Section), all members of the University of Padua.

Please register here by 24th April 2022. Participants will receive an invitation to a Zoom meeting in a timely manner.

For any enquiries, please contact Barbara Gödeke at barbara.godeke@unipd.it.

Please note: In order to ensure the quality of the session and for the benefit of the participants, the number of participants for this workshop is limited to a maximum of 21. There are 3 workshop places per partner university and these will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. If there are less than 3 registrations from one university, the remaining places will be allocated in list order regardless of affiliation to a partner university.

The Arqus workshop series on language and cross-cultural competence is offered in the framework of Action Line 4 Multilingual and Multicultural University (sub-line 4.5), led by Leipzig University. These workshops target academic and administrative staff at partner universities and focus on specific topics such as working and teaching through the medium of English, intercultural awareness in the classroom and outside, and inclusive language.