Celebrating languages in schools and communities
To help identify new pathways to celebrate languages and languages heritage in Nottingham(shire), we awarded eight small ‘Celebrating languages heritages’ grants to schools, community groups, and arts organisations to devise and co-deliver projects in 2024, made possible by funding from the Nottingham Trent University Impact Accelerator Fund.
See the videos below with each of the partnerships which illustrate the individual projects, as well as an over-arching video about the ideas behind language as heritage.
Archway Learning Trust, New Art Exchange & Ukrainian Cultural Centre
BeatFeet & Forest Fields Primary School
Nottingham Contemporary & Nottingham Education Sanctuary Team
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 and Refugee Roots
Windmill Community Gardens, Refugee Roots, Open Arms & City of Sanctuary
Bulwell Arts Festival (One Vision Partnership), Joy Rice and Dee Kalakoti
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.
Nottingham Poetry Festival & Cultural Vibrations
Diversify Education and Communities CIC
VIDEO CASE STUDIES
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.
We 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!
Celebrating Languages Projects
Overarching video (9 minutes) with clips from each project and commentary from Natalie Braber, Professor of Linguistics, Nottingham Trent University.
Primary Schools - Celebrating Languages project
‘Our Song’, with thanks to:
Archway Trust, Bluecoat Bentinck Primary
Freddie Kofi, New Art Exchange
Iryna Muha, Ukrainian Cultural Centre
‘Project Donkiloo Laa, Song Swap and Share’
with thanks to:
Beatfeet and Forest Fields Primary School
Art of Belonging - Celebrating Languages Projects
‘A Word to our City’ with thanks to Peter Rumney, all participating students and teachers at Nottingham Education Sanctuary Team, Nottingham Contemporary, Lakeside Arts, New Art Exchange and Nottingham Castle.
Still photos by Ismail Khokon and Nottingham Contemporary.
‘Conversation and Creative Cafe’ with thanks to Tara Lopez & the Participation team at Nottingham Playhouse, and Refugee Roots participants.
‘World Garden Words’ with thanks to Tracey Lloyd from Windmill Community Gardens, and Refugee Roots, Open Arts, City of Sanctuary.
Still photos by David Baird
Community - Celebrating Languages Projects
‘Culture Conversations’ with thanks to Nicola Curzon, Producer of Bulwell Arts Festival (One Vision Partnership), Poet Joy Rice, all who contributed to the poem, Bulwell Forest Garden, United Ventures and Video Producer, Dee Kalakoti.
‘Tea and Talk Together’ with thanks to Meraj, Freddie, Nikeria and Shanine from Diversity Education and Communities and all stallholders, participants and visitors to Beechdale Community Centre.
‘Pidgin, Patois and Poetry’ with thanks to Nottingham Poetry Festival, Cultural Vibrations and all the workshop facilitators and participants.
Video Producer: Oscar Golunski