Public engagement with languages research: what’s your experience?
Creative Multilingualism has been alive and kicking for three years now. Part of our mission is to make languages more visible, valued and vibrant. To achieve this, we’ve run lots of public engagement events and activities to help share our research and to showcase the fun and creative side of multilingualism.
Along the way, we’ve learnt lots of interesting lessons, from how early in the process we need to start thinking about evaluation to the limitations of running events in museums (no pens allowed!). We have also found some really fun and exciting ways to share the joy of languages with local communities.
We don’t want this experience to be lost once the Creative Multilingualism programme finishes, so we’re creating a Public Engagement with Research Toolkit which we will make freely available online.
We want the toolkit to help Modern Languages researchers organise public engagement events, both big and small. Working with language(s) can bring a new level of complication to public engagement activities, such as: how do you make the invisible (language) visible? How do you organise events when you don’t know what languages the participants will speak and they may differ from those you know?
This toolkit will offer solutions to challenges you may come across, and will hopefully inspire you to find new, creative ways to share your Modern Languages research.
We need your help!
But we can’t do this without you. We want to share as many tips and ideas as possible, so we’re asking for all Modern Languages researchers to share their experience of putting on public engagement activities and events.
What went well? What could have gone better? What made you want to tear your hair out? And what do you wish you’d known before starting?
Take our short survey to share what you’ve learnt and help us make a really effective and useful toolkit! Survey closes on 31 July 2019.
Any questions, get in touch at creativeml@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk