Deck of Professions

The Deck is usable art for language & culture learning. We start from the real world of everyday life, reflecting the people, places, and things of our community as the starting place for language learning. Language is local.

In all of our work building bridges between languages and cultures, we’ve realized that learning a language is an ongoing, nonlinear, dynamic process. It’s not a matter of doing it right, but doing it well. This is the difference between literacy and fluency. Literacy is static and comprehensive – it’s either right or wrong. Fluency flows in the now, a function of context – the communication of meaning between people. Like a dance, you have to practice the steps until they become natural.

We realized we needed a textbook that allowed us to work with our particular reality to enable newcomers to our community to engage with the ongoing narrative. The visual medium is a more effective textbook for fluency development – it’s flexible and practical, just like our lives. It reflects reality without getting lost in analysis. It allows us to “talk” about the world we are experiencing, without dependence on a particular language.