Celebrating Languages in schools and communities

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Archway worked with renowned musician and singer, Freddie Kofi from New Art Exchange and Iryna Muha from the Ukrainian Cultural Centre to support the process of learning songs by music teachers and students. In doing so they aimed to provide teachers with material and CPD to help decolonise their curriculum.

Project Donkiloo Laa is a development on a previous project where children from The Gambia and The UK shared their favourite childhood songs with each other. Songs in Mandinka, Wolof, Jola, Fula and English have been taught through insightful music-making and singing workshops, including hand drums and the kora. 

As part of their Max Literacy project, Nottingham Contemporary provided a city-wide creative programme with young refugees and asylum seekers, visiting sites across the city and helping them express their written and verbal responses both in their home languages and English with the help of associate writer, Peter Rumney, working closely with NEST (Nottingham Education Sanctuary Team).  

Nottingham Playhouse have been building on their collaborative project with Refugee Roots, where the Playhouse’s Conversation Café meets the Refugee Roots’ Art Session. These weekly sessions combine language skills and social elements with creativity in the forms of theatre, puppetry and crafts.

Windmill Community Gardens has created a garden of words which describe the crops grown at the centre. This is a celebration of the many languages spoken in Nottingham. Artwork and posters have been created to display the results in an impactful way, and will be digitised so that community gardens everywhere can welcome those with English as a second language. 

Bulwell Arts Festival (hosted by OVP) ran workshops in writing poetry and film leading to the creation of a short film themed around celebrating women’s contributions to their community. The women, living in Bulwell, speak different languages and are from various cultural backgrounds, and together share their experiences of female strength and positivity. Producer: Nicola Curzon, Poetry Workshops: Joy Rice, Video Producer: Dee Kalakoti. 

As part of this year’s Nottingham Poetry Festival, Cultural Vibrations organised workshops exploring the languages and dialects of the Caribbean and African communities. Through Dub poetry and afrobeats, they focused on how these languages and dialects have affected culture, identity and slang in the UK. 

Beechdale Community Centre held a series of events including a Cultural Exchange Fair with stalls, music performances, food from around the world and creative activities celebrating cultural diversity.  

ChalleNGe has had the pleasure of working with video producer, Dee Kalakoti, to create video case studies (scroll below) of the Celebrating Languages projects in 2024, as part of the NTU small grants programme.  

Capturing the impact of each project and giving you a chance to see them in action!