Taking Liberties: Ideals of freedom in contemporary South Africa: a practice-based approach to research with multilingual writing communities
Author: Graham Mort
Graham Mort reports on the methodology of a funded, multilingual writing project in South Africa, reflecting on the inter-disciplinary research potential of Creative Writing as a subject.
ABSTRACT
This paper will focus on a Leverhulme Foundation-funded research project, Taking Liberties, which took place at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, from January to May 2018. The paper will trace some antecedents for this multilingual Creative Writing project, drawing out methodological practices that informed its design and implementation. It will trace the engagement with students at the University of the Western Cape in the context of historical and contemporary political conditions. Outputs from the project will be featured and discussed in terms of text and performance. Links will be provided to web-based outputs to create an interactive dimension. My discussion of the project will reflect upon the nature of practice-based research in Creative Writing and the wider implications for the discipline and its inter-disciplinary capacity.
KEY WORDS
Liberty; Creative Writing; African Writing; Apartheid; Poetry; Performance; Multilingual Writing; Collaborative Research; Research-as-Practice
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