Translanguaging space and creative activity: theorising collaborative arts-based learning

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This paper focuses on an innovative transdisciplinary educational arts-based learning project, LangScape Curators, which links to and leads from research conducted for the AHRC-funded ‘Translation and Translanguaging’ project. Here, we describe how we work collaboratively with creative practitioners to use a variety of creative arts methods with young people to explore the linguistic landscapes of Leeds. We propose a theoretical framework for collaborative research activity of this nature, and we use one of the creative arts activities–collage–to exemplify visual understandings of how communicative repertoires and linguistic landscapes are explored through co-produced pedagogical workshops. The programme and its associated research make an original contribution to linguistic landscape-based collaborative ethnographic research. We conclude by setting out directions for the future of these activities and their application in applied linguistics research and practice.