Promoting Awareness of Language Diversity

International Mother Language Day 2018-2019

Forum Library is at the heart of its community offering activities and space for people to come together. Friendly, welcoming and open to all.

We celebrate International Mother Language Day each year. It is one of our major events and we look forward to it each year. We feel it is important to promote the awareness of language and cultural diversity in our community, we feel proud of all the different languages spoken in Wythenshawe and want to do our bit to celebrate this. It is always a free event open to all but mainly aimed at a family audience, we have lots of hands on workshops, activities and experiences for people to get involved in. We like to work with partners and local groups each year to set the programme. It is always very popular and well attended and enjoyed by our public, partners and staff.

Some examples of our favourite activities since 2018:

• Home Sweet Home wall hanging, what home is to you!
• We are all special people bunting
• Language games ran by Manchester University students
• African Drum workshop with Drumroots
• Fabulous food provided by Samosa-shack
• Scratchable World map – building a picture of Wythenshawe
• Hello in your Language interactive display
• Presentation about Africa done through music, songs and traditional costume by Afro-Tots
• Multi-language banner workshop
• Song workshop and performance ran by The Bridgewater Hall
• Music from Papa Sam Alafia, Creole singer
• Traditional stories, told through Dance and Music, by Language and Culture of Bangladesh

In 2020 attendees of our monthly Library of Sanctuary events joined the celebrations for International Mother Language Day. See what they enjoyed during these events!