Children and young people aged 7-18 across the North East in schools and communities across the North East are invited to get involved in this wonderful creative activity, which allows them to express themselves in their own language or a language they are learning. For Mother Tongue, they can write an original poem or their memory of a song, poem or text in their home language. For Other Tongue, they will write an original poem in a language that they are learning.
Click here to find out more, download the guidance and get involved.
If you want to be inspired and see the response from last year’s activity, click here to see the Mother Tongue Other Tongue 2022 e-book with examples of writing and drawings from across the North East in many languages. Feedback from schools and groups last year showed that this activity was valuable in enabling young people to express themselves and share their culture and heritage, their sense of belonging. They wrote creative pieces in 22 languages and these were an incredible outpouring of creativity and emotion and their writing expresses their feelings about the world, about themselves, about family, love and loss, joy and loneliness, about friendship and displacement.
This is the third year that we have offered this activity and we are grateful to the Association of Language Learning for funding the co-ordination of the project, to Newcastle University Language Resource Centre staff and Student Language Ambassadors and to Crista Hazell, the Project Co-ordinator.
Mother Tongue Other Tongue is one of The Big 3, activities that run from January to the end of March. You can also join in:
- Just One World – our festival song which invites children and young people, schools and groups to sing, sign, play and perform this celebration of unity and diversity as part
- Where can languages take you? Poster competition inspiring children and young people to learn languages and explaining the positive impact this can have on their future
There are so many other resources and activities available right now and you can also register now for a wide range of events and activities available in March.
