We are delighted to share the Mother Tongue Other Tongue e-book, a digital anthology of children and young people’s writing from across the North East. The anthology includes poems written in 35 different languages spoken at home or being learned, as well as audio recordings of some children reading their poems.
Click here to read the 2025 Mother Tongue Other Tongue Digital Anthology
2,304 children aged 7-18 years from 37 North East schools participated in the activity, which is one of four creative multilingual projects running from January to the end of March, as part of the fifth annual Express Yourself: North East Festival of Languages 2025.
The languages which feature in the 2025 anthology are: Afrikaans, Arabic, Bangla, Bulgarian, Chinese (simplified and Mandarin), Dutch, English, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Hawaiian, Igbo, Italian, Kurdish, Malayalam, Norwegian, Old Norse, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Twi, Ukrainian, Urdu, Urubu, Welsh, Yoruba and Zulu.
Registered schools received a teaching resource pack to support them to engage pupils in creating their pieces. North East schools submitted a selection of children and young people’s poems, song lyrics or remembered pieces in their home language (Mother Tongue) or original pieces in a language they are learning (Other Tongue). The anthology includes examples from schools across the region and all schools received a certificate for taking part.
The submissions of writing from children for Mother Tongue Other Tongue and the selection shared in the digital anthology, demonstrates their creativity and reflects their memories, new experiences, as well as things that matter to them. They include original pieces, remembered poems and songs. The children explain why they chose to write the pieces and some accompany them with drawings. The anthology also includes some audio recordings of children reading their poems. Many of the pieces are moving and thought provoking, others will make you smile.
Mother Tongue Other Tongue was hosted by International Newcastle, led by Project Coordinator Crista Hazell and supported by the Association of Language Learning North East and staff and Student Language Ambassadors from Newcastle University’s Language Resource Centre.
It is wonderful to celebrate the diversity of languages across the North East in this MTOT Digital Anthology for 2025. Some of the pieces have been brought to life by the young people reading their pieces which you will be able to hear on some of the pieces.
Thank you to the teachers, Teaching Assistants, community groups and families who support the Mother Tongue Other Tongue Project and encourage their learners to participate in this important part of the Festival.
Thank you to the participants for inspiring us with your submissions, and of course to the Language Resource Centre team of student readers led by Holly at the LRC at Newcastle university who read every single submission.
Enjoy this 2025 collection.
Regards and best wishes to you all, Crista
Crista Hazell, MTOT Project Coordinator
Well done to all the young writers who took part in the Mother Tongue, Other Tongue celebration 2025. It’s great to see the range of languages we have in the region, to be proud of, and to see how young people express themselves in such diverse and creative ways!
A word of thanks, of course, to all of the families and teachers who support the young people to explore the cultural wealth of all of these languages!
Steven Fawkes, Chair of Association of Language Learning North East and Interim President of the national Association of Language Learning
Mother Tongue Other Tongue continues to be a wonderful addition to our Festival of Languages. It enables children and young people to express themselves and share their thoughts, feelings, memories and aspirations in their own languages or languages they are learning.
It goes beyond the individual to families, communities and schools and helps build understanding of children and young people’s diverse languages and cultures.
Declan Baharini, CEO of International Newcastle and Festival Co-ordinator
Acknowledgements
- Thank you to all the children who participated and shared their thoughts, feelings and passions
- Thank you to all the schools, teachers, families, communities and groups that made their involvement possible and for giving them this opportunity
- Project Co-ordinator Crista Hazell who did an amazing job running this project for the fifth time
- Andrew Grenfell and the staff and students at Newcastle University’s Language Resource Centre, who checked all the submissions
- Steven Fawkes of the Association of Language Learning North East for supporting the development of this project over the last 5 years
- Declan Baharini and International Newcastle for hosting the project again this year
- The North East Combined Authority, for funding this project commission as part of the Festival
- The national network of partners promoting Mother Tongue Other Tongue across the UK, led by Manchester Metropolitan University, which originated the Mother Tongue Other Tongue project.
This project was funded by the North East Combined Authority
The project was supported by:
Resources were provided by:
