Multilingual concert wins award
We’re absolutely delighted to announce that our multilingual concert, We are Children of the World, has been awarded a prize for Excellence in Cultural Music at the Oxfordshire Music Hub Gala Awards. The concert was the first ever performance of We are Children of the World, a composition by Lin Marsh commissioned by Creative Multilingualism to celebrate the many languages spoken in Oxford’s schools and communities.
The concert was organised in partnership with the Oxford Festival of the Arts and involved 500 children from schools across Oxford. Magdalen College School’s Music Department helped teach the children the lyrics which include folk songs in seven languages (Arabic, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Urdu and Swahili).
Feedback from teachers and parents involved with the project was overwhelmingly positive and many said the song helped start a conversation about the many languages spoken in their school. One teacher said that their pupils, “wanted to learn more about where the languages were spoken and find out what languages were spoken in our school. They researched the countries and languages, and wanted to learn greetings or other aspects of the languages”. One of the pupils who took part in the concert stated: “this is the best thing I’ve done!”.
We want to spread the joy of this multilingual performance and highlight the many languages spoken in schools across the UK, so we’ve made all the teaching resources needed to put on this performance available to all. Visit our resources section to find the score, band arrangements, backing track, lyrics and detailed teaching PowerPoints – all free to download. All we ask is that you let us know if you do put on a performance.
Where next?
Find out more about the multilingual concert
School presentation: foreign languages are not as foreign as we think