Sample exercise: Close listening

Irish context: The Irish pilot group worked together to arrange, compose and perform pieces of music in response to two stories from the oral tradition of dinnseanchas, or stories about place names. These stories have survived within the oral tradition for several generations, some with roots reaching back over 500 years. In part because of this, the language in the stories can be challenging, with expressions and vocabulary not in common use. This is part of the value of such stories — they act as a repository for features of the Irish language which have been lost to modern speakers. 

Understanding these stories can be challenging even for native Irish speakers. As such, listening to them is a loaded endeavour and can bring up emotions such as shame, defensiveness and sadness at the erosion of culture already taking place.

This exercise gave participants a safe space to listen to and watch an expert in these stories. It provided them with the chance to listen at their own pace, stop the recording, ask questions and discuss.

Other contexts: This exercise could be used in other minority language contexts, where there is a real or perceived language barrier to engaging with the intangible cultural heritage form.

The purpose and aim(s) of this exercise: To help participants understand the language in the stories.

How/why does this exercise enable transformative learning? This exercise made the stories more accessible, as the language used is old and can be difficult to understand even for native Irish speakers.

The ideal number of participants: 5–10.

Duration: 1 hour.

Materials required: Screen, speaker, laptop, recording of stories collected previously.

Description of the exercise step by step:            

1. We had previously recorded video footage of the heritage expert telling a story.
2. The recording was played to participants using a large screen.
3. The recording was stopped at intervals to explain words and discuss/translate the story.
4. Participants could call out/raise a hand if they wanted to pause/ask a question.

Other essential things: The heritage expert was present during this exercise. He answered the questions of participants while the art educator operated the laptop/video. Two facilitators were necessary.

Tips to the instructor (what must be taken into account in doing this exercise): Two facilitators were necessary for this exercise — the heritage expert and the art educator.

The main role of the art educator was to bear in mind the language ability of each participant in the room and to know who may be nervous of asking a question directly, acting as an intermediary between the heritage expert and participants.