Article by Suki Zhang (Festival Intern – Digital Content Creator)
For the team behind Express Yourself: North East Festival of Languages, promoting language learning is about much more than teaching vocabulary, it’s about opening doors, building confidence and inspiring young people to see the world differently.
During six years, the Festival has become the most ambitious language festival for schools in the UK and Europe, reaching more than 114,000 children and young people in over 430 schools and groups this year alone. Behind every workshop, cultural activity and school event is a dedicated team working to make languages exciting, accessible and meaningful.
Declan Baharini, Festival Coordinator and Chief Executive Officer of International Newcastle, says the mission has remained the same from the beginning:
We want to ignite a love of languages for children, young people in the North East and across the UK. We want to provide interesting enrichment activities for the schools and provide really fresh and creative ways for children and young people to engage with diverse cultures and languages.
We’re trying to broaden horizons, build confidence, foster skills and improve intercultural awareness, because the world is so interconnected now and there are so many opportunities for young people who speak different languages and have an understanding of different cultures.
That vision has helped shape the festival into an event that goes beyond the classroom. Through creative workshops, cultural celebrations and partnerships with universities and organisations, the festival encourages students to connect language learning with the wider world.
The scale of the festival is made possible through collaboration – with over 50 local, regional, national and international partners involved in delivering free resources, activities and events online and in person. A Festival Steering Group supports the development of the Festival and it has been part funded by the North East Combined Authority (find out more about the Festival partnership here). Alongside the Festival team members, who coordinate the Festival, manage communications, support interns and undertake monitoring and evaluation, everyone plays a role in creating Festival experiences that are both educational and inspiring.
That long-term impact is one of the reasons why Newcastle City Council continues to support the festival. Sarah Edgar, an education consultant in the Council’s School Effectiveness team, has been involved as a key member of the Steering Group since the beginning and manages the Festival grant from the North East Combined Authority.
Sarah sees the festival as an important way to support both language learning and inclusion. She explains that the events help children recognise the value of multilingualism:
Speaking another language and learning another language at school is a superpower!
For Sarah, the benefits extend beyond education. The Festival also helps prepare young people for the future by building confidence and practical skills.
It’s developing young people who are very good at communicating, who are then ready to go on into the jobs market.
Nathalie Paris has been working part time managing both the Festival’s social media and supporting the five Festival student interns from Newcastle and Northumbria Universities. For her, the Festival is about helping children imagine new possibilities. She recalls a moment at a university event where a young student turned to a lecturer and said: “I’ll see you when I come here to university when I come to study Japanese.”
Moments like that show how the festival can inspire children to think beyond their current circumstances.
The events will help to change how the children see things.
For Festival communications volunteer, Natali Lekka, joining the Festival was driven by her passion for languages and her belief in the importance of encouraging young people early.
I love what this festival stands for, and I think we should be promoting languages and this is why I wanted to offer my time for free, basically, as a volunteer, to help promote it.
Working in communications, she helps produce newsletters and website content that connect schools and families with festival events. For her, the real value lies in the impact the festival can have on children’s futures.
Even if 10% of them decide that, ‘I really love this festival and I want to have a career in languages,’ I think that would be a success.
This year the Festival was supported by five Festival interns from Northumbria and Newcastle University. They attended events, interviewed participants, took photos and wrote articles. They were supported by the Festival team and were paid as means of providing real work experience.
Click here to find out more about all of the interns and their Festival experiences, as well as what they produced for the Festival in terms of digital content.
At its heart, the Festival is about creating joyful and meaningful experiences. Declan recalls one particularly memorable Yoruba workshop where a child told her it was “the best day he’d ever had in his life.” For the organisers, these moments are a reminder of why the work matters.
As the Festival continues to grow, the team hopes to reach even more schools and inspire more young people to embrace languages and cultures. What began as a response to a decline language learning has become a movement driven by collaboration, creativity and belief in the power of communication and wider experiences.
About the author
Five Festival interns from Northumbria and Newcastle Universities have been producing articles and digital content for the Festival this year. The Festival wants to provide opportunities for students to gain real-world experience to help them in their future careers. All five attended over the two days of workshops.
Suki Zhang is studying at Newcastle University, doing a Masters in International Multimedia Journalism. She works as a broadcaster at Newcastle Universities radio study and writes for the student newspaper.
The Festival is part-funded by the North East Combined Authority
