What a treat for the ears and the mind! Schools across the country engaged in a Bilingual Poetry session with teacher, poet and spoken word artist, Michaël Vidon, as part of our 2026 Express Yourself North East Festival of Languages.
Pupils saw and heard Michaël create poems in real time and shared their own poems using a padlet and writing in a mix of French and English.
This was a really creative and fun way to engage pupils, play with sounds and gain confidence in spoken French. Over 1000 young people were signed up for the session.
I performed a bilingual rap and poem. Then I demonstrated how to write bilingually starting from simple sentences in French using the whiteboard in Canva: Very fun way of working live and writing my thoughts out. I also explained my reasons behind writing with my two languages: as a French national living in England, writing poems in English has been a motivation to learn new words and find the right turns of phrase and images to express myself. When I performed my first poems in front of English people, it made me feel proud and also like I belonged!
Michaël Vidon
“We loved it, thank you so much. There was a brilliant symmetry to the session: une histoire d’exploration and déviation via Law to poésie. An attentive playfulness with language that moved you (and us) to des endroits insolites. It chimed (but did not cloche) with my students who, themselves, are thinking across plusieurs langues and who come together each week to a classroom driven by French and English and everything in between. A reprieve from exams, une trêve exemplaire (pas mélancolique). Merci mille fois, mille fois merci.”
Dr Catherine Ames, Head of Languages at The Grey Coat Hospital and Lead Practitioner, Languages Consultant, ALL Council Member
Further information and links
Michaël is French and teaches French at a secondary school. He is a poet, spoken word artist and Spoken Word Educator and producer of multilingual poetry projects. He specialises in multilingual creativity with workshops led in French and mixing a range of languages with English.
- Click here to visit Michaël’s website
- Follow Michaël on social media: instagram | tiktok | Linkedin
Click here to find out about other French related events, activities and resources in the Festival, as well as resources available from the Institut français.
Organisers
This activity has been developed by Michaël Vidon. It is funded and supported by the Institut français and was offered free to schools as part of Express Yourself: North East Festival of Languages.
- Contact Michaël Vidon on his site
- Anne-Lise Gallay for the Institut français French language offering: anne-lise.gallay@institut-francais.org.uk
