POETRY MATTERS - Transdisciplinary learning bridging Business and Arts

School of Business - Dr Ronika Chakrabarti & Siobhán O’Brien, Students and co-researchers Anisha Pal and Lubing Zhang

Objectives 

The pilot project explored opportunities to foster inclusive curriculum through transdisciplinary learning, bridging Business and Arts. It investigated the success of a "Poetry Matters" workshop in cultivating listening skills as a foundation for engaging with multiple languages, cultures and traditions. By engaging with poetry—a precise use of language—the workshop emphasized attentive listening as a sustainable skill, particularly relevant in business, where "Transforming Business for Good" goes beyond profit to foster social and environmental responsibility. Moreover, this transdisciplinary approach explored how Universal Design for Learning can be engaged through this lens. 

Outputs 

1. A "Poetry Matters" workshop, led by experienced poet, translator & editor Keith Payne, and facilitated by MSc in Marketing and Digital Marketing Strategy.
2. A student-led literature review on inclusive curriculum and the integration of Arts and Business, including a thematic analysis from workshop insights.
3. Evaluation of the pilot through participant feedback.

Feedback & Next Steps 

1. Interest in Inclusive Curriculum: Positive responses to the literature review and pilot project report, and increased faculty interest in embedding similar initiatives, measured by faculty feedback at the Postgraduate (PG) Teaching and Learning committee meeting, noting requests to expand such initiatives across the School.
2. Informing Future Initiatives: Adoption of workshop in PG orientation and wider curriculum, measured by uptake of the pilot across programmes. 

Poem – Digging In 

That woman has been planting the same cabbages all her life, the same spades turning over the sod, lying down with men on the banks of the stream, giving birth alone on the banks of the stream. At night she’d howl down the lanes and no one would listen. Now she has a daughter who has learned to read. 

From the Galego of Luz Pichel, ‘Sachando na horta,’ trans. Keith Payne in A Different Eden: Ecopoetry from Ireland and Galicia, Dedalus Press, 2021