This spring saw three festivals of international culture take place across the North East. Schools attended from across the region bringing a total of 240 pupils to the three events held in Durham, Middlesbrough and Newcastle. Every pupil had the opportunity to learn a new language and take part in a cultural activity. Schools also attended a group session encouraging them to understand other cultures and emphasising the common interestes bridging these cultures.
Student Ambassadors
Throughout the morning events pupils were led by student ambassadors from the various host universities. Ambassadors were able to offer advice and inspiration to the pupils who all showed a great interest in studying languages. Indeed, evaluations showed that after the festivals there had been a remarkable 70% reduction in pupils who said that before the festival they did not want to study a language. There was also a 31% increase in pupils said they would definitely carry on with a language.
These statistics confirm the effectiveness of the day's activities. Most popular amongst these were the cultural activities which included Capoeira (a Brazilian dance/marshal art), Bollywood dancing, Origami and Persian Caligraphy. Pupils particularly enjoyed the way that these sessions combined foreign language and culture with something tangible they could either actively practice or take home with them. This cultural activity was complimented by a taster session in a language ranging from Arabic to Russian, Chinese to Portuguese. These taster sessions were led by both students and teachers and were very succesful. One inspired teacher has even begun to learn Portuguese in earnest with a view to teaching it at GCSE after attending the taster session at Teesside.
We are delighted to anounce that next year we will be running the festivals again. We intend to coincide them with the passing of the olympic torch through the region and theme the sessions around the olympics.
