How can the moving body be harnessed as a mode of communication in supporting communities undertaking social transition efforts?

This workshop will introduce participants to Choreographic Games Making: an interactive collaborative improvisation method consisting of a series of awareness-based movement activities for groups. These semi-structured games create simple ‘ecologies’ in which participants make decisions on how to situate their actions, by attending to the awareness of their own experience and that of others.

Choreographic Games Making is an experiential research tool being developed as part of a PhD research project which investigates the use of bodied methodologies and interventions to support social change initiatives in schools. As an expanded practice of communication and experience design research, informed by choreographic and improvisational thinking, it provides an investigatory and analytical approach for engaging social groups in a shared enquiry into the state of the group dynamic.

The workshop session will consist of:

• Re-familiarising with the body and non-verbal ‘felt’ modes of communication through activities that build bodied vocabulary and awareness;

• Playing the Choreographic Games together as a group;

• Exploring feedback methods and discussing the experience of the games.

Participants will come away from the workshop with insight into methods and activities for working experientially with communities and social groups. This workshop would be valuable for those interested in the body as a way of knowing and researching through or designing with the body.

This workshop is supported by the London Doctoral Design Centre and hosted at The Royal College of Art during London Design Festival, 2018.

Participants are invited to also visit the exhibition Design Research Evolution on display at Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art, open 10-6pm 20th-23rd September 2018.

Elements of this workshop will be filmed and may form part of a PhD thesis, participants will be invited to take part in the research and complete a consent form.