The festivals of
international culture have become flagship events for Routes into Languages in the North East. They have been running every year since the project began five years ago, bringing pupils from across the region together to celebrate and learn about foreign language and culture. 2012 was no different as 18 schools attended the events at thre
e of the region’s top universities.
Last week began with undergraduate student language ambassadors assembling at Durham University to welcome 90 pupils to the first festival. The student ambassadors are an integral part of the festival with even more responsibility this year. Students were responsible for leading both the welcome plenary activity and all the language taster sessions on offer. As always, they rose to the task and delivered some innovative and exciting classes in Russian, Arabic, Italian, Chinese, Portuguese and Japanese.
The festivals conti
nued from Monday to Wednesday with Teesside and Newcastle Universities also opening their doors to language pupils. As well as learning new languages, pupils were given the chance to participate in exciting foreign cultural traditions including Capoeira (a Brazilian non-contact marshal art), African drumming, origami, Persian calligr
aphy and Bollywood dance.
The festivals are attended by pre-GCSE options classes and organisers Routes into Languages hope that it will inspire pupils to select one or more languages at GCSE. Pupils left this year’s events full of enthusiasm for the world’s cultures with some commenting ‘It was very fun and presented me with new ways to learn languages’, and ‘fun sessions filled with lots of new information!’.
Teacher
s were equally impressed with one in particular getting in touch to tell us ‘our pupils were just about to make their final choices, and I know some of the pupils we took (most had not initially chosen languages which is why we chose them) have since changed their minds which is great.’
We really enjoyed hosting the events and a major thank you goes out to all the schools who attended and to all the student ambassadors who put so much work into making it a success. Long may the festivals of international culture continue.
