First-Ever Festival of Languages at St Andrews

Wednesday 2 October marked the start of the three-day Festival of Languages, a first of its kind at St Andrews. It brought together students, staff and locals to celebrate the myriad of spoken, written and studied languages within and beyond the St Andrews community. 

As advertised on the University’s website, the festival consisted of ten readings, talks, workshops, activities and language tasters (the opportunity to learn some basic and common words and phrases of the languages).  All were free, encouraging the exploration of languages that span a wide range of categories––living and ‘dead’, global and endangered,  majority and minority. 

Having come up with the initial idea, the School of Modern Languages gave Dr Gavin Bowd, Reader within the School, the role as lead organiser of the festival. Dr Bowd said that overall, the festival was successful “in terms of the range and quality of the events and in terms of numbers: 30 participants and more than 280 attendees”, adding that he “felt a lot of goodwill generated over the three days.” To mark the start of the festival and the fortieth anniversary of the 1984-1985 miners’ strike, on Wednesday Dr Bowd held a talk on Poetry from the Mine (and elsewhere). Alongside renowned poet Paul Malgrati, Dr Bowd presented the work of three-miner writers: Joe Corrie from Fife, Joules Mousseron from France, and Constant Malva from Belgium. 

This year’s National Poetry Day fell on the second day of the Festival, being the perfect opportunity to celebrate how poetry takes form in different languages. Amongst Thursday’s events was the Poetry ‘Wiki Workshop’ held by Dr Kirsty Ross from the School of Computer Science and Dr Pauline Souleau from the School of Modern Languages. The 90-minute session covered an explanation of the Wikimedia Foundation including the ethics and editing of Wikipedia as well as uploading of photos to Wikimedia Commons. Mr Tom Rippon, French Student Convenor and event attendee expressed how interesting it was to learn about the process of how Wikipedia is edited, “we use it so much; what is happening behind the scenes is quite rigorous and quite thorough … it is not as unreliable as everyone thinks it is!” Moreover, Rippon reflected on how the event has helped him on all levels: professionally, academically, and personally. Above all, Rippon said the event reminded him that “studying languages is not only professionally enriching but also can help you make a meaningful contribution to non-profit initiatives and in a voluntary context.” Rippon concluded feeling very positive about how the Festival could unfold over the years to come, and that “in St Andrews, despite our international population, English is still very much dominant so to see all these different languages come together in such an informal, open space was really quite refreshing.” 

The third and final day of the Festival again offered several, varied events, one of which included a ‘walkshop’ titled “Linguistics Travels to Scottish, Ukrainian, and Spanish landscapes”. Co-organised by Dr Liliana Chávez Díaz, Lecturer in Latin American Studies, and PhD candidate, Ms Viktoriia Grivina, the walkshop offered the unique opportunity to take part in a poetry reading in three languages whilst walking around St Andrews The hour-long session allowed participants to observe the beautiful landscapes of the town and compare them to those in the poems. On reflecting upon the Festival, Dr Liliana Chávez Díaz said: “This festival has had great success in terms of people attending them and in demonstrating that a transcultural festival of this sort is a real need for a university that aims to be diverse and inclusive.”

The Byre Theatre, already home to many student, amateur, and professional performances, hosted most of the events that took place as part of the Festival of Languages. Miss Lia Magalhães, a front-of-house student volunteer at the Byre Theatre, described her first volunteering shift as Thursday’s ‘Multilingual Poetry Reading: From Ancient to Modern’. She said: “I thought it was really interesting, even not being a language student. Language is part of your day-to-day life, and you can’t really escape it, so I was very happy that I did it.”

When asked about how she felt about the Byre hosting the Festival, she replied: “Now that we have lost the movie theatre, the Byre, at least for me, is the epicentre of the arts in St Andrews, so bringing as much attention as possible so people can still have arts in their day-to-day life, is important.” Moreover, various  cultural and creative student societies held stalls in the Byre foyer over the three days, as well as ‘The Interactive Book of Sayings’ and ‘Represent Your Languages: An Interactive Map.’

Looking to the future, the lead organiser, Dr Bowd, highlighted the potential to “broaden the range of language-related themes and events, …reach[ing] out further to the wider community”, and that “2026 is probably the most realistic horizon for another Festival.”

Alongside the introduction of the Festival of Languages at St Andrews, the School of Modern Languages has also recently launched the Language Diversity and Minority Languages exhibition, which seeks to highlight the language diversity within the school by presenting some of the languages spoken by members of the school. The exhibition, organised by Ms Ana Barazal Barreira, is on display in the Buchanan Building and is open for viewing.

Photo from University of St Andrews website