Translanguaging engagement: Dynamic multilingualism and university language engagement programmes

: This thought piece reflects on the implications of the author(cid:213)s research on translanguaging for university language engagement work with children and young people in schools and colleges. It presents the LangScape Curators project as an example of possible directions for research and practice in this area.


Introduction
This article takes the form of a thought piece (Ding, 2016). Its purpose is to consider the possibilities of my current research, which focuses on dynamic multilingualism and multimodality in community arts, when applied to the broad area of university language engagement with children and young people in schools and colleges. Writing a thought piece of this kind has a number of purposes. It aims to develop and articulate an evolving dialogue between my current research and my previous higher education practice in educational engagement for languages and arts. In so doing I start to sketch out the implications of my research within the broader arena of languages and cultures, and particularly in terms of engagement with these subjects in schools and colleges. It brings into contact translanguaging (e.g. Garc'a & Li Wei, 2014;Otheguy, Garc'a, & Reid, 2015;MacSwan, 2017) as one particular lens for understanding dynamic multilingualism, empirical evidence drawn from an ethnographic research project with multilingual street artists, and university languages engagement work with schools and colleges. I consider a current example of research-led engagement work, LangScape Curators (Atkinson & Bradley, 2017;Bradley, Moore, Simpson, & Atkinson, 2018), to sketch out possible directions for research and practice in this area.
As a thought piece it is also unfinished. It is a starting point. It sets out a number of questions, ones which I will continue to ask and to find answers to over the course of the next few years. Questions that will also Ð I know Ð lead to more questions. But it is also an attempt to draw together threads from a series of projects Ð research and practice-based -and articulate the commonalities between them. The anthropologist Tim Ingold has developed a taxonomy of lines, in which he writes about threads and traces. A thread, he explains, is Òa filament of some kind, which may be entangled with other threads or suspended between points in three-dimensional spaceÓ (2016/2007, p. 42). A trace is Òany enduring mark left in or on a solid surface by a continuous movementÓ (p. 44) i . Writing Ð and in this case, bringing together multiple, diverse, often conflicting, threads of research and practice Ð is a deliberate act of meaning making. As Ingold explains, these threads can also become traces and traces can become threads. In doing so, I hope that some of these threads will become traces, or, enduring marks. And some of the traces will become threads, entangled together into new ideas.
The meshwork is a concept Ingold borrows from Henri Lefebvre (Lefebvre, 1991(Lefebvre, /1974Ingold, 2016Ingold, /2007 to describe the Ôentanglement of linesÕ practice. The purpose of sketching out a number of ideas for continuing this work and establishing a research agenda, in turn, aims to mark out a trace (an enduring trace [Ingold, 2016[Ingold, /2007], I hope). This has been extended to ESOL (Simpson & Bradley, 2017), with James Simpson and Mel

Research context: Translanguaging in superdiverse city wards
Cooke developing translanguaging as pedagogy for English language classrooms , asking what a multilingual approach to English learning for adult migrants might look like. We have conducted detailed multimodal analyses of translanguaging and embodiment in the context of sports clubs in terms of distributed cognition in basketball training (Callaghan, Moore, & Simpson, 2018). We have broadened our scope to encompass the visual, using arts-based methods and collage as a way of considering how visual arts and literacy might be used to open up translanguaging spaces for creativity and criticality in language and in transdisciplinary pedagogy (Atkinson & Bradley, 2017;Bradley, Moore, Simpson, & Atkinson, 2018). The materiality of translanguaging, and the objects and props created by artists for street arts production has been explored alongside and in connection with the transmodality of spoken word poetry and musical adaptation. Threads have been drawn, connecting these discrete projects (Bradley & Moore, forthcoming (Canagarajah, 2011); translingual practice (Canagarajah, 2013), metrolingualism (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010;Pennycook & Otsuji, 2015) and plurilingualism (LŸdi & Py, 2009). Translanguaging is also a creative lens. It has been a catalyst for thinking more broadly about communication, both in terms of the individual idiolect (Otheguy et al., 2015) and what Sandrine Eschenauer (2014) describes as translangageance, or the development of a shared language, following Jo'lle Aden who describes translanguaging as ÒlÕacte dynamique de reliance ˆ soi, aux autres et ˆ lÕenvironnement par lequel emergent en permanence des sens partagŽs entre les humainsÓ (Aden, 2013, p. 115, in Eschenauer, 2014. For AdenÕs definition, the concept of shared space is central.

Translation and translanguaging in production and performance in community arts
For my own research I investigate how people make meaning across space and place in multilingual street arts projects (see Bradley & Moore, forthcoming). I draw from a range of approaches, including linguistic and visual ethnography (Blommaert & Jie, 2010;Copland & Creese, 2015;Pink, 2014) and from multimodality (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996;2001;Rowsell, 2012;Jewitt, Bezemer, & OÕHalloran, 2016). In this sense I am developing links between quite different paradigms. Multimodal approaches to communication developed from Hallidayan systemic function linguistics (Halliday, 1978), with linguistic ethnography having developed from the ethnography of communication and interactional sociolinguistics (Gumperz, 1982;Hymes, 1972Hymes, , 1974 were necessary to answer the research questions, and that obtaining complementary materials for analysis (Kress, 2011, p. 240), for example photographs and visual data, was a core methodological and epistemological consideration.
My research in the context of community arts asks how people communicate across languages and cultures in collaborative processes of production and performance. I worked with a UK-based arts organisation and a Slovenia-based arts organisation as they collaborated to devise and produce a street theatre production, ÔHow Much Is EnoughÕ based on the traditional folk story of the Zlatorog, or golden-horned goat (Copeland, 1933). My research findings are centred on four main stages of the production of a piece of street theatre. I have called these stages conceptualisation, making, devising and performing.
The folk story on which the production is based travels across these stages and undergoes a series of multiple resemiotisations (Iedema, 2001(Iedema, , 2003 until it is performed in the street as part of an international street arts festival. The four stages are sketched out here. Firstly, the introduction of the story and the basis for the street arts production takes place during puppetry training workshops which I frame as conceptualisation and for which narrative is the central analytical focus. Secondly, the text becomes a synopsis, a ÔpromoÕ, objects, puppets, costumes and props. In this making stage the analysis shifts to foreground the objects as they are created and the historical bodies (Scollon & Scollon, 2004)  was worked and reworked into its final version. Fourthly, during the performance stage, the production itself forms the focus of analysis. The performance is brought into being across the streets and squares of Slovenia for an international street arts festival, pulled out of suitcases and then hidden away in side alleys. As an interactional piece, it represents and embodies the actions, objects, people, histories and conflicts that have built it. It is, in itself, a contact zone (Pratt, 1991). During the making stage, language is decentred as the props and objects that are created by the group disrupt the initial plan for the performance (Bradley, 2015).
Metacommentary (Rymes, 2013 Therefore, throughout the development of the street arts production, language is both centred and decentred. Scripts are drafted and redrafted. Objects are adapted. The script is returned to continuously, and the new objects being created are considered in its redrafting, in its editing, and in its application. The street arts performance itself is the final resemiotisation of the text, the resultant meshwork of threads. However, discussion of named Languages is part of the final devising process for the performance: which Language(s) should the performers use for the playÕs dialogue? Translanguaging is evident within the performance, which is a multilingual piece,

Languages engagement
The  multi-and trans-disciplinary approaches to language. The MEITS project, as an example, is designed across six strands, ranging from the arts, foreign language learning and cognition.
The Multilingual Manchester project, led by Matras, is another example of a project embedding transdisciplinary approaches to language. These large-scale projects demonstrate the growing dialogue between and among ÔlinguistsÕ (applied, socio, modern, inter alia) that mirrors the kinds of questions my research has raised (for me) in terms of my previous practice. Hutchings and Matras (2017) refer to the dialectic between the intellectualisation of these challenges (similarly to the ongoing discussions of international/home student categories as ÔbordersÕ, see also Badwan, 2015;Harvey, 2016;Collins, 2017) and the institutional structures within which these discussions take place. We can, following Sinfree Makoni and Alastair Pennycook (2007) challenge the very notion of a ÔlanguageÕ through our research. But, as Chris Perriam (2017) points out, we still conduct our research and are positioned with departments, schools and faculties whose names reflect nation-states and national boundaries. Likewise happens in schools and colleges, with these operating in an even less flexible environment than higher education institutions. Are we equipped, as Hutchings and Matras (2017) suggest, to develop ways of engaging with children and young people in languages that reflect their realities? For example, these ways might include considering and responding to the languages of migrant and diaspora communities in the UK.
How can we, in university modern languages schools and departments and in schools of education, work with schools and colleges to co-produce and co-create language curricula in a way which might revitalise languages at all levels in the UK education system? How does shifting focus from Ôbounded languagesÕ actually work in the context of languages engagement? How do we avoid Ôthrowing the baby out with the bath waterÕ? How might translanguaging, as a conceptual framework but also as a way of understanding how engagement might work, be a central consideration for languages engagement? To the extent that we can do this at a project level (the TLANG project is multi-disciplinary and this has been one of its strengths, see , is it also possible to do this at departmental, school and faculty level? Or do we continuously create meshworks, the threads of which intersect high above our own day-to-day work in our institutions?

Translanguaging Arts and Languages Engagement: LangScape Curators
The focus for this article is languages engagement and I want to now sketch out a few ideas (traces) for a research and practice agenda around translanguaging and languages engagement. These ideas draw from a small-scale educational engagement project, LangScape Curators ix which uses the linguistic landscape (Blommaert, 2013;Gorter & Cenoz, 2015;Pennycook, 2017), alongside developing methodologies used by researchers to investigate it, as a lens for children and young people to develop critical and analytical skills, and to understand more about language and communication. The landscape is considered following Gorter and Cenoz, as a Òmultilingual and multimodal repertoireÓ ( , p. 17, in Pennycook, 2017 and the approach which is adopted seeks to develop Òa holistic view that goes beyond the analysis of individual signs as monolingual or multilingualÓ (Gorter & Cenoz, 2015, p. 63).
Earlier in 2017 I was invited to deliver two lectures for Level One undergraduate students in the School of Education at the University of Leeds as part of the ÔEducation in a Multilingual WorldÕ module. For the first of these I focused on the concept of translanguaging and theories of dynamic multilingualism. I drew on research by Brigitta Busch (2016) on biographical approaches to understanding the linguistic repertoire and students were asked to draw a portrait which showed the languages within their repertoire and position these on the portrait. It is an exercise that we have developed and used in engagement activities from the TLANG project when working with children and young people in the Harehills and Beeston areas of Leeds (Atkinson & Bradley, 2017). The aim of this exercise was to ask students to question the idea of the Ômonolingual speakerÕ and to consider their own communicative repertoires (or idiolects) and the shared aspects of these. The kinds of conversations which arose from this activity included a number of students articulating their concern over not being multilingual ÔenoughÕ, some critique of the language experiences of some of the students in school, discussion over the role of ÔEnglishÕ and language ideologies and nation states. It was a simple exercise requiring a pen, a piece of paper, and drawing. The act of drawing, rather than listing the languages spoken, required the students to think differently, as well as to reflect on where they might position these languages on their bodies and why.
During the school half term holidays in 2016-2017, young people from Leeds-based educational centres in the east and south of the city, carried out a similar exercise but with larger, life-sized portraits which worked to demonstrate the shared elements of our communicative repertoires (for a fuller analysis, see Bradley et al., 2018). This was part of a three-day programme of language and arts engagement work for

Translanguaging Approaches to Engagement?
The overarching aim here is to see dynamic multilingualism as normal and unremarkable (Garc'a, 2009). By considering the broad, multilingual, multisemiotic repertoires from an individual and from a shared perspective, we aimed to create spaces in which all participants could draw from their full communicative repertoires and talk about ÔlanguageÕ across contexts. These were spaces of creativity and of criticality in which the young people were able to share their linguistic repertoires and in which we all became co-learners. Over the course of the three days, the young people researched the linguistic landscapes of their communities and synthesised and analysed their findings using a range of arts-based methods, working with artists and researchers. At the end of the three days the participants presented They encourage children and young people to become researchers themselves and to respond in an engaged and critical way to their environments. Returning to IngoldÕs metaphor, the traces of the research project are present and visible within the spaces of engagement, as meshworks. Although the focus is on the linguistic landscape, language (and certainly Language) is both centred and decentred. In using arts-based methods we also disrupt traditionally bounded ways of ÔseeingÕ language (Berger, 1971) and ways of doing language research (Law, 2004;MacLure, 2013) and languages engagement.

Conclusion
This thought piece sought to bring research findings around translanguaging into dialogue with language engagement in higher education. I articulate some of the findings emerging from my research into translanguaging and dynamic multilingualism in community arts and street theatre and from the research into translanguaging across space and place in superdiverse cities. In describing some of the multiple and different ways in which translanguaging is being critiqued and extended, it aimed to set out the threads and traces of this work within the context of higher education languages engagement with children and young people. It was written in response to a range of questions emerging across the broader modern languages area which, following Michael GratzkeÕs (2017)  University Council for Modern Languages (UCML), is understood as Òa continuum of disciplines which cover Linguistics, Language Acquisition, Translation Studies, (languagebased) area studies, and (language-based) HumanitiesÓ. Gratzke raises a number of important questions for the field as a whole, based around understandings of culture and its centrality within languages teaching and research. Like GratzkeÕs short piece, this article does not seek to answer all the questions it raises. But it does seek to make connections between the threads and traces which have not previously been articulated, namely how a dynamic multilingualism approach (from linguistics) might inform languages-focused engagement (in modern languages). It uses a brief example from a current transdisciplinary arts and language engagement project, LangScape Curators, to illustrate the possibilities and to make these connections, and as a translanguaging approach to engagement.
What might a translanguaging approach to language engagement look like? And how could translanguaging be adopted as epistemology in cross-sector, transdisciplinary languages engagement projects? Translanguaging offers a lens to consider the ways in which we draw from our communicative repertoires in daily life. A translanguaging approach to languages engagement might recognise: 1) we all draw from our communicative repertoires in different ways and across spaces and places; 2) we all bring multiple skills and experiences to interaction; 3) in working together we seek to develop and share our communicative resources, continually building on our own repertoires; 4) there are different ways of seeing (following John Berger, 1972): we make meaning in different ways and approaching from the perspective of different disciplines and fields strengthens our understandings; 5) commitment to collaboration and co-production (Facer & Enright, 2016) in engagement work, starting from within universities themselves, and therefore drawing from across a wide range of disciplinary repertoires; 6) commitment to developing a repertoire of innovative research-based approaches to evaluation of such initiatives, building on but not limited to research methodologies in linguistic and visual ethnography.
There are significant methodological, epistemological and theoretical challenges to bringing together the diversity of approaches to language within the context of languages engagement. But, by seeking to work in a way which considers everyday multilingualism as