Process - Embodied Learning

This project arose from the Mary Anne Domarchuk, Public Health Nurse (who is also a longtime community participant in Runaway Moon projects), wondered how to approach nutrition awareness in a fun way that would engage students and their families. We met with the principal of this small rural school who was keen to connect with community and bring local artists into the classroom. 

We found multiple ways to embody this dependable part of all of our bodies in multiple ways and though multiple media: we created ‘The Digestive Dance’ with the children suggesting the motion and sound for each section of the digestive tract, and the entire school learned this dance.

We created prints and stencils with which each person printed a T-shirt; the placement of the digestive tract on the T-Shirt matched where it is inside the body -another way to embody our learning. 

We built a large-scale model of the gut from mouth to anus out of the recycling stuff, holding it all together with transparent packing packaging tape. 

Each class became the experts in a segment of the digestive tract, the older grades taking on the more complex portions such as the small intestine. Cathy Hay, drama/dance teacher, created movement with the students to portray (based on) what takes place inside the gut as food is digested, creating representative spaces with the movement as well. Using words generated by the students, musician Murray MacDonald created a script and songs about the movements and functions of each segment, which the students recited along with their movement. 

 We mapped out the Digestive Tract in the school rooms and hallways, and transformed the school with lengths of fabric. We cut bright glowing fabric into lengths for scarves in different colours corresponding to basic food types: proteins, vegetables, and carbohydrates. 

 Families and community were invited to a Participatory performance. They gathered in the gymnasium, where the whole school, dressed in their t-shirts, performed the Digestive Dance, then filed out. Audience members were given a scarf and were told what the scarf represented.

A few at a time, audience members were led through the Lips (a draped doorway) into the Mouth, pulled by the tongue into the esophagus, pushed into the stomach, herded past the liver and pancreas, led through the small intestine and into the large intestine, after which they were pooped out the back door. Teachers were the sphincters, or doorkeepers, between sections.  Scarves were snatched from audience members by students along the way in the portion of the gut where that food would be broken down and absorbed.