School children from across Liverpool City Region will perform a special mini-Eurovision Song Contest tomorrow afternoon (Friday, 28 April) – with a special concert of European songs, including a Ukrainian lullaby.
Students of foreign languages at the University of Liverpool have been working with schools across Liverpool, Wirral, Sefton, Halton, St Helens and Knowsley to promote language learning and celebrate the power of music to bring people together.
міні Eurovision (міні is Ukrainan for ‘mini’ and pronounced ‘min-yee’) is a Festival of Languages through Music and is part of EuroLearn, curated and delivered by Liverpool City Council’s Culture Liverpool team.
The programme is supported by funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Department for Culture, Media & Sport, Spirit of 2012 and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
This unique project has seen undergraduate students from the Department of Languages, Cultures and Film at the University work with Resonate – the Music Education Hub for Liverpool to teach songs in Spanish, Italian, French and German to primary school children and develop a pallet of resources for use in schools across the city region.
Each of the schools have been working with a student to learn a song in one of the European languages. The students have visited the schools to assist with translation and pronunciation as well as talking about the language and what studying a foreign language at University involves.
The project culminates tomorrow with all the schools coming together to perform their songs at the міні Eurovision Festival Finale in the University of Liverpool’s state-of-the-art Tung auditorium in the Yoko Ono Lennon Centre.
(The міні Eurovision festival finale will take place in the Tung Auditorium on Friday, 28 April, 1-3pm. It is an event for schools (not open to the public) but there are a limited number of spaces for media available, please e-mail catowen@liverpool.ac.uk to reserve a space and for more information.)
At the festival finale the undergraduate students will recreate the atmosphere of Eurovision by presenting fun language learning activities linked to the songs performed. These activities will showcase not only all the languages that can be learned at the University but also the diversity of languages spoken in the schools taking part and across the city region.
Students taking part have also said that being part of міні Eurovision has provided them with invaluable employment skills. Poppy, a final year student who has been working with Year 4 at Castle View Primary, Halton, said:
“Through this project I’ve really seen the impact that both music and languages have on the community on a deeper level. It’s inspired me to reflect on the importance of working with different people from different places and I’d love to be involved in a job that would allow me to work with others on something that gives back to the community.”
A video specially recorded by the University’s partner university in Ukraine, Sumy State University, will introduce greetings and phrases in Ukrainian for the children to repeat.
READ MORE: Biggest Eurovision education programme ever hits the region
