Description: Connecting clinical, cultural and creative practice.
The Stammering Collective grew from a conference at University College Dublin in 2018: Metaphoric Stammers and Embodied Speakers: Exploring Clinical, Cultural and Creative Practice in the area of dysfluent speech . We came from very different fields and perspectives (e.g., artists, musicians using creative practice to express their experience of stammering; those interested in the representation of stammering across different cultural forms – literary, cinematic, political, philosophical; SLTs involved in c
The conference was timely in bringing together those engaged with interdisciplinary approaches to stammering, generating new conversations and collaborations across fields and experiences. In 2019 we received a Wellcome Grant to develop this work, strengthening the exchanges across clinical, cultural and creative practice and, in the process, mapping out the emerging field of Dysfluency Studies. While we acknowledge and nurture the different ways in which stammering can be experienced and expressed, at the
The project was initially structured around our key strands (clinical, cultural and creative), offering space to those in each area to communicate their approach to others in the group; this then formed the basis for feedback and discussion across our varied fields and experiences. As the project has developed, we have increasingly moved away from these original alignments, towards the kind of collaborative concepts and concerns that have emerged from discussion. These are the topics that shape the focus, o