Celebrating International Mother Language Day

International Mother Language Day 2018

Longsight Library’s second celebration of International Mother Language Day was an afternoon of performance and language themed arts. Incredible dancing and poetry from the Bangla School students much to the joy and applause of a huge audience of family, friends and customers. 7yr old Arisha said “poems and dancing were my favourite”.

Mimensis, a Yorkshire based dance and musician duo retold the Peacock & Crane fable through interactive performance linking into the library’s exhibits on loan from Manchester Museum. Supporting this, the museum crafted colourful peacocks with families.

Stanley Grove PA’s full-time artist Emma Martin engaged local Longsight schools to take lines of a poem and rewrite in as many other languages as they could. This then created an exquisitely beautiful installation piece across the front windows of the library.

The poems from a poetry book The Same Inside explored the themes of empathy and friendship. Poet, Matt Goodfellow did a lively and fun reading. “Poems were brilliant, I bought a poetry book and Matt signed it!” reported six year old Safa.

Multi-lingual Manchester students bought together a wealth of language themed activities including mapping community languages.

Creative writing took place with Young Muslim Writers. Another participant had the following to say; “We enjoyed the event. The library always gives us opportunity to observe different things that we can’t access. Thank you, library”.