Description: Judith considers herself a true 'international citizen'. Originally from California (US), she used to work as a documentary film maker in Sweden and now lives in Melbourne, Australia, where she works as an arts therapist and teaches at the University.

Characterization: The interview is 11 min long; Judith speaks rather slowly (120 words per minute) and has only a slight American accent; vocabulary medium to difficult, some abstract ideas; text divided into 6 rather short sections; suitable for B1/B2.

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What I do

Judith: I'm on vacation in Alice Springs and taking a break from work and responsibilities in Melbourne. I flew up here a couple of days ago, and tomorrow I'll be visiting a colleague who is ... facilitates an aboriginal women's arts co-op, and in this arts co-op the aboriginal women produce art work that is sold nation-wide. They produce paintings, musical instruments and they've been doing that for a couple of ... several decades. / In Melbourne I work as a ... an arts therapist. I have a private practice working with adults, children, young people using the arts for health, well-being. / And I also teach at RMIT University, which offers a programme in creative arts therapy. It's a postgraduate programme, and the students come to that field of arts therapy from education, arts, nursing, sociology, psychology backgrounds. /
[ video ] [ exercises for this topic ] Word count: 133 Duration: 1m14

What I used to do

Judith: And prior to that, prior to coming to Melbourne I lived and worked in Stockholm, Sweden, where I was also interested in the arts. I worked as a documentary film maker creating videos about people's lives there. I was interested in apartheid for a time for the South African movement against apartheid and worked with some artists there to produce a film. I also worked with children and their creativity and music and movement and so on, in day care centres and so, my background has all led me to wanting to become an arts therapist. And I found this sort of education I wanted in Melbourne at RMIT. Also, when I was in Stockholm I worked with teaching English to adults, and the adults were Swedish business persons or people from health professions or people from a wide range of backgrounds who needed English in their work for maybe an international conference or international work of some kind. /
[ video ] [ exercises for this topic ] Word count: 158 Duration: 1m24

My current work

Judith: In the field of arts therapy I currently work with adults who have had ... faced life's challenges such as heart attacks, stroke, loss of work, and introduce people to the ways in which arts can stimulate, can enable people to find interests and meaning and something away from the challenges of their lives. And what I find is that adults who've lost touch with their creativity nearly always connect with that sense of creativity that gives life and spontaneity and often joy. The arts can also stir up emotions and sometimes for people who've struggled that's a very vital outlet. And it's a safe outlet for people - the arts and music.
Sabine: Do you mainly work with music?
Judith: I mainly work with arts, visual arts, music but also movement and drama and story telling. All of those things can come into working with people because a picture can tell a story and a story can be acted out. And I've also worked recently in schools quite a lot with adolescents who've found it hard to be in normal school systems and settle down into certain types of learning, and yet they find it more engaging and interesting to be involved with the arts as a way of learning. And I've also worked with young children to enable them to tell stories through music, art. / Working with adults is interesting because inevitably most people do reconnect with their childhood. They remember play, they remember the places in their lives where they felt very free. And that's often ... because that's the way that I offer the arts, that it's a very free expression. And that can be hard for people if they've been in very regimented work places or institutions. It can be challenging but over time a lot of people are able to reconnect with that and they begin to remember colours and sounds and things they wouldn't ordinarily think about in their lives. /
[ video ] [ exercises for this topic ] Word count: 323 Duration: 2m51

Teaching at the university

Judith: I also teach at RMIT University in Melbourne. RMIT stands for Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and I teach in a postgraduate programme there where I facilitate the students to learn about the arts and the therapeutic aspects of the arts, music and visual arts and combination of the modalities, combination of story telling and movement. So the work is ... the learning and the work is multimodal, using all of the different arts. I also supervise students when they go into their field practicum placements, which are in hospitals - well, not so much in hospitals these days, because we've found that it's easier to offer arts in settings like community health settings or community settings easier than in hospitals. However, students choose to do placements in a variety of settings: schools, community health as I said, and I supervise students as they go out into these practicum placements. And that's one of the main ways that they learn in their final year of the arts therapy postgraduate programme. The students then also write a masters project thesis where they're able to use the arts as part of their project, so not just writing but also using the arts.
Sabine: Do they usually specialise in one area or is that the ... is the idea that it is a combined approach?
Judith: Not necessarily. Students can focus on any aspect of the arts or creative process or creative arts therapy practice. Some students choose to focus on one modality such as visual arts, some students look at the combination of different modalities, some students focus on creative arts therapy practice.
[ video ] [ exercises for this topic ] Word count: 267 Duration: 2m10

Living and working abroad

Judith: My accent is probably mainly American. I grew up in the Los Angeles area but I spent quite a lot of time in Northern California as well. And I ... as I mentioned earlier I lived and worked in Sweden. And what took me to Sweden initially was that I have Swedish relatives who live in the Southern part of Sweden, in Skona, and I fell in love with the country, the countryside, the way of living. It was very different from Los Angeles. The countryside in Sweden is very open, lots of forests and lakes and I thoroughly enjoyed living and working in Sweden. / I ended up living in Stockholm for twelve years. And whilst I had enjoyed working there and really enjoyed being able to travel and work throughout Europe, I wanted to settle in a warmer country and ended up choosing to migrate to Australia for a range of reasons: I wanted to live in an English-speaking country. I enjoyed the pace of life here. It's closer to the sort of pace of life the people live in Sweden. And yet there're many opportunities here. So I really enjoy that. I love the natural elements of Australia, I love the birdlife and the wildflowers and the climate.
Sabine: So have you travelled around Australia much?
Judith: I haven't travelled around Australia very much. I've ... I'm really enjoying this time. It's the first time I've been outside of Victoria, which is were Melbourne is. And it's such a gorgeous climate in Alice Springs, very sunny and I'm really enjoying learning about the aboriginal culture. /
[ video ] [ exercises for this topic ] Word count: 263 Duration: 2m11

Growing up and studying

Judith: I grew up in Southern California. At the age of eighteen I moved up to Palo Alto, which is in the San Francisco Bay area, where I studied and took a Liberal Arts degree, studied art, science, languages, literature - a whole range of things. And that was what took me to Europe, was after studying at Stanford University I then went to Europe for a year. I lived in Germany and a group of us had travelled from the University to live in a small town in Germany to study the culture in Beutelsbach, which is outside of Stuttgart. And we learned a lot about the German culture, the history of that area, and I think that's a fabulous way to get to know both a culture and a language. And that was what inspired me to then stay longer in Europe and move on to Scandinavia and learn about the culture there.
Sabine: And from Scandinavia you went to Australia?
Judith: And from Scandinavia I then went to Australia and I now consider myself an international citizen, I think, a citizen of the world and my accent is quite mixed as a result of my travels. /
[ video ] [ exercises for this topic ] Word count: 198 Duration: 1m24

List of speakers

Acknowledgements, availability and copyright

Acknowledgements: The project has been supported by the University of Tuebingen. The video interviews have been carried out and recorded by Sabine Braun, Stefanie Hahn, Petra Hoffstaedter and Kurt Kohn. The speakers have agreed to the use of the materials for non-commercial research and education purposes.

Availability of the ELISA corpus: The ELISA corpus is made available by the Department of Applied English Linguistics at the University of Tuebingen. It is freely available at this website for study, teaching and research purposes, and copies of the transcripts may be distributed, as long as this statement of availability appears in the text. However, if any portion of this material is to be used in educational presentations and publications, permission must be obtained in advance. Commercial use of any form is excluded. For further information about permissions, please contact Dr. Sabine Braun at s.braun(at)surrey.ac.uk.

Copyright of the ELISA corpus: Department of Applied English Linguistics, University of Tuebingen.