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Arts & Communication Using multiple languages within an improvised fairytale

and cultures who engaged in collaborative improvisational in China, Guam, and the United States of America (USA)
art, creative writing, dance, music, and fairytale-making in held an online session as an experiment to explore the use
communications to express personal experience with each of digital arts-based improvisation for expressing their
other during the COVID-19 health crisis. The authors personal experiences during the pandemic. Initially, these
consider this global health crisis as a novel international therapists questioned if their use of different primary
experience that introduced difficulties in the expression of languages and diverse cultural backgrounds would
personal experiences in dramatic and unexpected ways. introduce barriers to this communication. However, this
Zhou, the editor of Creative Arts in Educational and initial session was successful, and meetings were extended
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Therapy, devoted a special edition of the journal to how to include participants from around the world, as the
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a variety of art forms addressed this unique global event. health crisis expanded.
This article draws from that effort.
These online meetings were based on physical storytelling
McNiff describes the worldwide use of the wide variety (PS), a practice in which a small group of movers creates
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of arts in response to the global health crisis as a “natural improvised dances in response to verbal reports. The entire
experiment” that contributes to our basic understanding group also responds to the movement episodes using
of how arts offer benefits in the most difficult of times by spontaneous art, poetry, and fairytale-making to create
generating expression and ideas in times that are unplanned, extended metaphors of the initial verbal presentations. This
unanticipated, and outside of common understandings. expression adds non-verbal and social/emotional context,
Hu has introduced the concept of how results of academic called the “story under the story.” PS has been previously
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endeavors can fall on a spectrum ranging from introducing used within family therapy, clinical supervision, 8-10 and
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possibility and probability to prediction. In Hu’s formulation, arts-based research. 11,12 These previous applications were
quantitative and qualitative research approaches generally done within Western culture, conducted in English, and
address probability and prediction, while artistic ways related to education and counseling topics. The Creative
of inquiry introduce new possibilities. Hu has proposed Dialogues project marked the initial application of PS
that these approaches can be integrated in addressing in an online setting to address the international global
problems in several areas. In this article, we will draw on health crisis. PS expanded to include new forms to match
developments that emerged from our creative activities the challenge of online engagement, accommodating
during an international “natural experiment” that developed international participants from diverse cultures who spoke
in response to the COVID-19 crisis. We introduce these various languages amidst the ongoing emergence of the many
observations as possibilities that can inform and become unpredictable social/emotional and political disruptions
integrated within more structured future programming and caused by COVID-19 in several parts of the world. As the
research involving cross-cultural communications within Creative Dialogues project expanded, it became part of the
settings that include diverse languages. larger “natural experiment” described by McNiff, which

To accomplish this goal, the authors describe the use included a general arts response that emerged in several
of two languages while improvising fairytales during ways to address the novel and unexpected global event of
co-creating arts-based expressions. The fairytale-making the health crisis. A review of material from this project is
was part of the Creative Dialogues project, in which well suited to offer unique observations as it included a
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small groups of between six to eight participants from wide variety of participants from multiple countries, lasted
several countries joined on Zoom to co-create multimodal for the duration of the pandemic, and used spontaneous
arts-based metaphors about their individual experiences improvisational action from a variety of non-verbal/verbal
with COVID-19 over a period of 3 years. Notably, the expressive modalities to express and communicate the
group members did not share a common primary language. personal experiences of attendees.
The use of different languages in the fairytale-improvising
process developed organically as an experiment during this 1.2. Review of other projects
project, presenting a creative challenge. This article will The authors were unable to find other projects that address
present how this creative challenge developed, the impact the combination of factors mentioned above. However,
it had on group interaction, and how these observations literature does exist discussing the use of dramatic and
might be applied within cross-cultural communication. other non-verbal programming and improvisation within
the cross-cultural and diverse language context, as well
1.1. The creative dialogues project as in areas that explore nonverbal communication of
The Creative Dialogues project was initiated in January emotionally complex topics. These topics include the use
2020 as the COVID-19 health crisis in China became of drama in teaching students with multiple languages,
globally known. A small group of creative arts therapists dramatic performances that make use of diverse languages,

Volume 2 Issue 2 (2024) 2 doi: 10.36922/ac.2079