On Friday, I attended Classrooms to Communities 2021 Provincial Conference for my choice of professional development. This year’s focus was “listening to the land, giving voice to the sea: stories to nourish hope and resiliency” (C2C, n.d.). One of the workshops I attended was “A Holistic Approach to Soundscaping”. Inspired from teachings within the First People’s Principles of Learning, a Holistic Approach to Soundscaping was an invitation for whole-body listening, or listening with all of the senses. Presenter and Aboriginal Education Coordinator, Faye O’Neil, explained that whole body listening creates an opportunity for the many different layers of knowledge to be revealed “based on your knowledge of the place you are in, your experiences, and the knowledge you have learned from Elders and Knowledge Holders in your community”.

With being given the invitation to redesign the semiotic mode of the first task, I was inspired to consider “whole- body listening” as a multiliteracy and culturally diverse way of knowing (ie. the role and practice of indigenous knowledge and learning) and reproduce or transform my “bag” into a soundscape. Beyond just listening, a soundscape invites visitors or listeners to notice what other senses are evoked in the sounds, and create new stories/literacies/meaning from that.

Looking at Figure 1 in a Pedagogy of Multiliteracies, (Leander, K & Boldt, G., 2013), I wonder where whole-body listening might be considered as a different mode of meaning? Because it moves beyond exclusively the “audio design” of sound effects. I also wonder, might there also be an additional mode of meaning such as “sensory design” to describe and interpret the design elements of something such as a holistic soundscape?

Resources:

C2C: Classrooms to Communities. (n.d.) https://www.c2c-bc.org/annual-conference-main

First Nations Education Steering Committee. (n.d.). First People’s Principles of Learning. http://www.fnesc.ca/learningfirstpeoples/

Judson, G. (2018). A walking curriculum: walking, wonder & sense of place (K-12). Middletown, Del.

Leander, K., & Boldt, G. (2013). Rereading “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies” bodies, texts, and emergence. Journal of Literacy Research, 45(1), 22-46.