Creative Multilingualism at Curiosity Carnival
On 29 September 2017, the Creative Multilingualism team joined almost 500 other researchers at Curiosity Carnival to help celebrate and share the exciting research taking place at the University of Oxford with the people of Oxford. Over 9,000 visitors took part in the event, which was spread across the city at different venues.
We set up stall in the breathtakingly beautiful Oxford University Natural History Museum and Pitt Rivers under the beady eyes of the stuffed creatures in the displays surrounding us. In honour of these natural wonders, we decided to focus our activities on our naming strand, which is investigating how different languages and cultures refer to birds, as well as our metaphor strand which is particularly looking at metaphors related to the body.
Our naming strand decided to ask visitors if they could work out which words in the English language originated from birds. They also wanted to spark visitors’ creativity and invited them to come up with new names for their favourite birds.
The metaphor strand enlisted the help of two mannequins and asked participants to think up some body part metaphors (multilingual ones were warmly welcomed) and stick them to the relevant part of the mannequin. By the end of the night, you could barely see the mannequins under their blankets of post-it notes each detailing a different metaphor.
We also held two performances to help further share our research with the visitors to Curiosity Carnival. Pegasus Theatre and The Conker Group created a mesmerising performance which wove together different folk tales about the swallow from diverse cultures across the globe. Is it a harbinger of doom? Or does it bring luck and fortune? And how did it get its v-shaped tail? They incorporated a variety of languages to show creative multilingualism in action.
Poet Paul Henry and Brian Briggs of Stornoway also performed their collaboration The Glass Aisle, a long poem with songs set on a stretch of canal in Wales. The work creatively combines the language of music and nature.
If you’re interested in upcoming Creative Multilingualism events, keep your eye on (excuse the body part metaphor) our Events page, and sign up for our newsletter.
More photos of the event below:
Photos by John Cairns and Ian Wallman.
Where next?
Inspiring pupils: multilingual creative writing