Translating Latin American Book Cultures

Translating Latin American Book Cultures was a 2023 project funded by a University of St Andrews Small Impact Award and led by Dr Patrick O’Hare.

It drew on Dr O’Hare’s research on the grassroots Latin American Cartonera publishing movement involving a cardboard-based technique for book-making and a democratic ethos focused around promoting literature and literature.

The first part of the project centred around the delivery of book-making workshops to Fife schoolchildren, given at Canongate Primary School (St Andrews) and at a University of St Andrews First Chances Summer School for secondary school pupils from all over Fife. For this part of the project, children and young people put together a radio play that was provided by “In the Beginning”, a collection of creation stories from around the world, adapted and dramatised for audio as an immersive listening experience for children.

In the second part of the project, Dr O’Hare worked with the Glasgow-based Creative Change Collective to deliver cartonera workshops to adults recovering from addiction. Participants developed  a cartonera book made up of theatre scripts that they themselves wrote and performed as part of a drama therapy course, as well as a policy brief developed by a Masters student and assistant.