Newcastle’s City of Languages initiative has been featured in NALDIC’s prestigious EAL Journal (Summer 2026). The piece highlights how Newcastle celebrates urban linguistic diversity as a powerful educational, economic, and cultural asset.
First developed in 2018 under the city-wide Our Newcastle, Our World framework and officially launched in January 2020, the Newcastle City of Languages partnership – built on a broad coalition of local authorities, regional universities, the voluntary and community sector, and various language experts – was established to empower young people to become confident, globally connected citizens.
The EAL Journal interview brings together key figures behind the movement, including former International Newcastle CEO Declan Baharini, Sarah Edgar (Education Consultant at Newcastle City Council), Steven Fawkes from the Association for Language Learning, and Vicky Gough from the British Council. The article explores how the initiative effectively challenged the national narrative of youth disengagement with languages by revealing that children genuinely want to learn and speak other languages, but often lack structural support, particularly for their home and heritage languages.
Today, Newcastle’s framework serves as a national blueprint, inspiring similar ‘Cities of Languages’ initiatives in major UK hubs, including London, Coventry, Portsmouth, Leeds, Liverpool, and Sheffield.
We wanted to visibly demonstrate that Newcastle is an inherently welcoming, multicultural and outward-looking city.
Declan Baharini, former CEO of International Newcastle
Access the full article, with permission from the publisher: Celebrating Every Voice: Inside the Cities of Languages Movement