ZIPPER WORKSHOPS

My zipper workshops have involved literacy researchers, practitioners, adult literacy students, university students and profts, administrators, home visitors, coordinators, and friends. People's experiences during these workshops attest to the power of the art process to deepen our explorations and understandings, both individually and collectively. Plus they are a lot of fun!

Read about how zipper sculpturing & workshops started, along with directions on how to create your own in an article I wrote for The Change Agent. Available in pdf at:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0ByPY1Zb5KvEtYmZlNjQ2NDctNjM3Yy00ZGI5LTgzY2UtMjUzZTk1ZDI2ZTMw&hl=en_US

PROJECTS

LEIS was 16-month project based in Belfast that involved exploring non-text methods with adult literacy practitioners and learners. As well as zipper sculpturing, there were drama activities, gamelan playing, popular theatre, and much more. Read about it and use the resources from the manual we created:  http://www.qub.ac.uk/leis/


I worked with HIPPY Canada (Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters) developing an adult literacy component in their family literacy program. We used zipper sculpturing while training the trainers.We produced a handbook ' Literacy Plus: A Practitioners' Guide to Adding Adult Literacy Activities to Family Service Programs' available from HIPPY Canada in Vancouver, Canada http://www.hippycanada.ca

RESEARCH

My research was a study of the power dynamics in an adult literacy centre in Duncan, BC, Canada and the use of artifacts as a research tool. The thesis 'Doing Freedom: An Ethnography of an Adult Literacy Centre' is available at http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/soroke/freedom.pdf 
For a shorter read, there is an article in the Literacies journal titled 'Artifacts as a Research Tool'  http://www.literacyjournal.ca/literacies/2-2003/practice/5/1.pdf