Blog

Our research proceeds from the premise that there’s more to languages than their practical benefits for communicative transactions.

This is not just about ‘added’ value. Languages are our key medium for self-expression, and as such they’re at the heart of individual and collective cultural identity. That gives them immense creative potential which is fundamental to our lives as human beings. While being inextricably connected with practical use, that creative potential is also an invaluable resource in its own right.

Our research programme was designed to develop a new paradigm for Modern Languages that is predicated on the intrinsic connection between multilingualism and creativity. This connection is embedded in our linguistic heritage, our linguistic development, and our communicative lives. It can give learners confidence in their innate ability as linguists, and it makes language learning lastingly rewarding. It also holds the key to establishing a common identity for the subject of Modern Languages across educational sectors.

In this section, we feature articles, videos and podcasts that give insights, snapshots and personal perspectives on the many ways in which languages and creativity interact and cross-fertilise each other.

Uncovering hidden language stories

In June this year we ran Act Yourself! Uncover your Hidden Language Story at both the Wyvern Theatre in Swindon (hosted by Prime Theatre) and at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. These creative workshops were open to all ages and were designed to help people explore their lives through the languages they know (and to some extent those they don’t!). There were drama games and exercises, arts activities including graffiti, filming and challenges based around translating.

Language learning: immersion was my answer

Being raised in south Louisiana, the French language was always around, squeezed in, but strangely elusive. My baby-sitter would say that I had a tête dur, my grandmother would cook pain perdu, and I remember my great-grand parents bickering in French with each other when I spent the summers. But they, like many parents, didn’t share their native tongue. It was for them, something they guarded from their children in hopes they would thrive in their English-speaking environment.

Translanguaging has made it to Scottish primary education and it is alive and 'coleando'!

All the World is Our Stage: primary pupils never lost in translanguaging, a multilingual performance showcasing heritage and school languages, has brought pupils and teachers from Whinhill Primary School together with actress-singer, Rebecca Cameron, and creative language learning social enterprise, The Language Hub.

Why I’m learning a language and why you should too!

Growing up I had only ever been around English; the only taste of a foreign language I got was ordering “frites” on family holidays to France. In primary school I attended the school’s Italian club where we sang a song about the alphabet, but I have no other memories of it whatsoever.

Photos from Creative Multilingualism events

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.

Slanguages, hip-hop, a Russian play, Punjabi poetry and Oxford University

This blog was originally posted on RaveetaWrites.

Oxford University hosted ‘Poetry in Motion’ last month at Wolfson College to academics, students, artists and creatives as part of their four-year-long research project Creative Multilingualism.

The Cave: a multilingual, multimedia opera

The Cave (1993), a multimedia opera by composer Steve Reich and video artist Beryl Korot, tells the story of the life of Abraham as it is given in religious texts and how it is interpreted by modern accounts given by individual members of three different religious and cultural backgrounds – Israeli, Palestinian, and American.

Performing Languages: overview film

The Performing Languages Conference in February 2019 saw academics, artists, performers and cultural practitioners come together to watch, discuss and debate what it means to perform languages.

In the words of one conference participant, “What I liked most about the conference is that it didn’t simply advocate for creative multilingualism; it made it happen, there and then”.

Babel competition for schools: winning stories

As part of the exhibition Babel: Adventures in Translation at Bodleian Libraries, we ran a competition to encourage pupils of all ages to engage with creative translation.

Pupils were able to choose from 3 tasks:

A) Magical Translation

Create a modern version of Cinderella in a language and medium (text, audio or video) of your choice with a typed English prose translation.

B) Fabulous Translation

Artificial Intelligence in the World of Languages: funded projects

Earlier this year, Creative Multilingualism held a funding call for projects linked to Artificial Intelligence in the World of Languages. We were particularly interested in projects which linked to the following themes:

Artificial Intelligence and Linguistic Diversity
Artificial Intelligence, Languages and Schools
Artificial Intelligence and Translation
The Creative Industries, Languages and Artificial Intelligence

The following projects have been awarded funding:

Giovanni Pietro Vitali working on Prismatic Jane Eyre maps

Mapping Jane Eyres across the world

In April, Prismatic Translation’s Associated Researcher in Digital Humanities, Giovanni Pietro Vitali, stayed in Oxford to work with me on mapping the global diffusion of translations of Jane Eyre. Giovanni Pietro’s trajectory has taken him from Pisa to Perugia, Nancy and Leipzig (where he trained in Digital Humanities); he is now a Marie Curie Fellow attached to Cork, Reading, and NYU.

Doctoral students funding call: funded projects

Earlier in the year, we launched a funding call for doctoral students for projects which resonate with our programme emphases of ‘Languages and Creative Identity’ and ‘Languages and Performance’. Grants of up to £1,500 were available to support students in their development as modern language advocates.

We're delighted to announce that the following projects have been awarded funding:

Welsh-language community engagement project