English at Work
Arts-Based Participatory Research of Workers’ Stories
With Deborah Barndt
On Zoom: Tuesday, October 14th @ 7 PM
Join us for an evening to reflect on a fascinating project in developing English-language skills in the workplace in Toronto in the 1980s.
In 1984, North York Board of Education hired Deborah Barndt and ESL teacher Mary Ellen Belfiore to produce a kit for teachers in the English in the Workplace Program (EWP). They were given rare access to seven workplaces to interview and photograph immigrant workers at their jobs, and in communication with their supervisors and fellow workers.
The result was English At Work: A Tool Kit for Teachers, a multimedia collection of five media tools: a photo story based on the work and home lives of two Portuguese building cleaners, a collage poster following a day in the life of a Dundas Street rail cleaner, a cartoon card game on health and safety issues, packages of photos from seven workplaces, and a cassette of a radio soap opera, based on communications problems workers face in the workplace. An accompanying manual of over 250 pages guided teachers in the use of the tools and in the creation of their own.
Deborah will share the history of EWP, the collective process of production, the five multimedia tools, and the connection between participatory research, artistic production, and popular education of workers’ stories.
DEBORAH BARNDT writes about herself:
Teaching at a community college in 1970 stirred my passion for alternative education and led me to pursue a doctorate at Michigan State University on the pedagogy of the oppressed methodology of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire.
Since then, I’ve worked to integrate the activist, artist, and academic in all my work as a photographer and multimedia artist, arts-based participatory researcher, popular educator, and social justice activist. In the late 1960s and 1970s, I travelled the world, my camera, my right arm, and lived in Strasbourg, Geneva, New York City, New Jersey, Michigan, Lima, Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto. In the 1980s and 1990s, solidarity projects took me to Central America, which fed my own popular education and arts practice in Toronto.
Zoom Invite:
Toronto Workers History Project is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: English at Work
Time: Oct 14, 2025 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81344282943?pwd=dp9suyyjye65xJPTcJtYWSkBSDclpw.1
Meeting ID: 813 4428 2943
Passcode: 614664
---
One tap mobile
+12042727920,,81344282943#,,,,*614664# Canada
+14388097799,,81344282943#,,,,*614664# Canada
Join instructions