Every year, the Express Yourself: North East Festival of Languages selects a song for children and young people to sign, sing and perform in many languages as part of our celebration of the diverse languages and cultures in the region.
For 2026, our Festival Song is ‘Love is the Only River’. The song is about global friendship, peace and unity, about everyone coming together and making the world a better place.
The Spanish translation was produced by teacher Aleja Carrasquilla from St Teresa’s Primary School in Newcastle. As part of preparing the Festival song materials, she taught children who volunteered from Years 4, 5 and 6 to sing the song in Spanish so that they could share it with other children in the region and help them learn it.
Click on the video to see the children’s performance.
It was inspiring to see our Year 4, 5, and 6 volunteers come together with such enthusiasm. They only had two weeks to practice, yet their energy and commitment shone through in every note, a true celebration of teamwork and joy!
Aleja Carrasquilla, Teacher, St Teresa’s Primary School in Newcastle
We are delighted to share this sneak preview of the Festival Song sung in Spanish with such passion by children at St Teresa’s Primary School. It is a wonderful way to spread joy, bonds of friendship and hopes for a bright and peaceful future. They’ve done a fantastic job! The children will also feature in a mini-film in January and we can’t wait to share their Festival Song journey.
There are already over 2000 children and young people registered to take part in the Festival Song in 2026 and we hope many more teachers will sign up and give their pupils the opportunity to take part and celebrate by singing in many different languages.
Declan Baharini, Festival Coordinator
Sign up and get involved in the Festival Song
Teachers in Newcastle, Northumberland, North Tyneside, Gateshead, South Tyneside, Sunderland and Durham are encouraged to sign up and take part in the Festival Song from January to 31st March 2026.
Videos of children and young people singing the song, signing the song and playing instruments will be put together into compilation video which will be shared widely.
- Click here for more information about the Festival Song activity and how to get involved
- Register your school by filling in the online registration form here.
Creating a Festival Song in many languages
We have run a Festival Song project for 3 months (January-March) in every Festival since 2022. It is one of the most popular activities for schools and has involved up to 7000 children and young people annually with the number growing year on year. It takes a lot of work over six months before the Festival begins to put everything together.
We chose this song because it is about promoting love and unity. Written by Trinity Rose with music by Ian Sloane, it was recorded with a group of teen friends representing different backgrounds (see original video sung in English online here). It was premiered across the 7 continents within a unity project through the Team 1RHR and Round Table Global charities on Jan 12, 2019.
Once we have the song choice agreed, we provide a range of translations and pronunciation guides in many different languages every year. Draft translations are produced by the Festival Coordinator (International Newcastle) in July/August and then checked with native speakers from our local communities, partner organisations and members and staff and students from our local universities, engaged by the Festival co-ordinator. We also try to find people who will sing the song in their own language.
The local music service (Newcastle Music Service, part of North East Music Hub) helps by creating vocal parts and different arrangements for musical instruments. They also create the video versions of the songs performed in different languages with the lyrics on screen and provide a backing track and recording guidance for the singers, so that all the song recordings are in the same time signature for children to learn. These are provided to schools from the first week of January.
- There are usually 20-25 different language versions provided, including languages taught in our schools, languages spoken in our communities and also British Sign Language.
- The English lyrics, language translation and a pronunciation guide are provided for all language versions.
- Videos with the lyrics on screen are created for as many languages as possible, with native speakers singing the lyrics (as audio or filmed). This helps children learn the song (along with the sheet with the translation and pronunciation guide), so they can hear how the words fit with the music.
The foreign language versions usually include: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Bangla, Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), Japanese, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Romani, Igbo, Yoruba, Russian, Persian/Farsi, Greek, Hindi, Urdu, Polish, Malayalam, Romanian and Turkish. These are languages most represented in our schools and communities. The British Sign Language version is signed on screen with the English lyrics showing to ensure that children with hearing impairments or who are Deaf are able to join in and also share their language with their peers). Children with other languages can also translate the song themselves and teach their friends.
Acknowledgements
We want to say a huge thank you to the people who have helped create the Festival Song Resources this year:
- Gareth Miller and Georgina Biddle at Newcastle Music Service and their boundless enthusiasm and hard work in making and sharing the Festival Song resources. liaising with schools and music services across the region and creating the compilation video
- The artist Trinity Rose, who wrote the song and gave permission to the Festival to use the song
- Declan Baharini, Festival Co-ordinator, for providing the draft translations and liaising with many native speakers to produce final versions and find singers
- Caroline Afolabi Deleu (Success4All, The Languages Collaboration Project and North East Arabic Teaching Council) and Holly Pennal (Newcastle University Language Resource Centre) for finding native speakers who could help with translations and singing
- The many people who have helped with translations and singing different language versions of the song (apologies if anyone is missed out):
- English – Trinity Rose
- BSL – Paul Whittaker
- French – Jean-Michel Paris (in France)
- German – Pauline Wick (Goethe Institut) and singer Ben Vonberg Clark
- Spanish – Aleja Carrasquilla, Teacher at St Teresa’s Primary School and pupils (singers)
- Italian – Antonella Rea (La Dolce Lingua) and her nephew in Italy, Emiliano Sisto Peticca
- Greek – Natali Lekka www.worldsofwords.com (a volunteer with our communications team)
- Russian – Jess Olenberg
- Ukrainian – Dariia Riabokin
- Turkish – Ulfet Sahin (Success4All) and Nulifer Atiligan (singer)
- Bangla – Syed Samad Ali (teacher and Festival Steering Group member)
- Punjabi – Aman Dhillon (ReelN and Festival partner)
- Japanese – Kaoru Umezawa (Durham University School of Modern Languages and Cultures and Centre for Foreign Language Study)
- Chinese – Professor Yuxiao Su (Director of Confucius Institute at Newcastle University) and Lanjin Li (CI team member)
- Malayalam – Noel John (via Newcastle University Language Resource Centre)
- Arabic – Hassina Machane (via Caroline Afolabi Deleu)
- Igbo – Kelechi Dibie (via Caroline Afolabi Deleu)
- Yoruba – Victoria Eniola (Kayine Education)
- Persian – Moha Shojaei and Rina Jahanshahi (via Newcastle University Language Resource Centre)
- Polish and Portuguese versions via Caroline Afolabi Deleu contacts