Traditional Tales, Untraditionally Told - adventures in language and making

A new project has been launched, encouraging children and their families to use their home languages during maker workshops in schools and libraries.

Children sat on the carpet in a library, listening to somebody read

Traditional Tales, Untraditionally Told is an exciting new project from Maker{Futures} and the School of Education that explores the importance of multilingual storytelling. Building on research by Dr Sabine Little and the Maker{Futures} team, the project aims to support teachers and librarians so that children have the chance to use all their languages when in libraries or schools.

More than 20% of current pupils have a first language other than English (DoE, 2023), and this project hopes to bring a greater sense of belonging by situating engagement with heritage languages in 'official' spaces. 

Over 100 educators from around the world attended the launch webinar on 21 January, exploring the free resources that allow anyone to run multilingual maker workshops, and those who take part will be able to share their experiences at an online celebration event in May. 

The resources available provide guidance for facilitating craft-focused workshops and ways to digitally capture traditional tales.

A table with craft materials

To find out more and watch the launch webinar, visit the project website