This paper explores what happened in the English classroom when two innovative projects merged and spoken word poetry became part of multilingual digital storytelling. As a Spoken Word Educator and Teacher Educator, we wanted to explore the complexity of bringing together these multimodal art forms. Making a poem come to life though film is hard and the research presented here interrogates these processes through working with a group of 13-14 year old students in the English classroom. Spoken word, digital storytelling and multilingualism are positioned within their emerging research fields, but remain on the margins of classroom activities. The critical ethnographic action research project examined how learning in the English classroom could be different. In the process of bringing together spoken word and multilingual digital storytelling, these students interrogate notions of belonging and uncover stories that matter through emotional and creative encounters with personal and cultural artefacts. These young people discover a shared imagery across languages and cultures and reclaim ownership over learning in the English classroom. Foregrounding spoken word and multilingualism in the English classroom had a transformative effect on young people's self-expression and imaginative thinking. In creating Belonging -A Spoken Word Film these students assert their multivoicedness.

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