Platform for Linguistic and Epistemic Justice (PLEJ) and the Coalition for Language Education hosted the symposium Going local in language education: Cities as sites for cross-sectoral connection on 28th March. The one-day symposium, which is PLEJ’s second major conference and networking event, brought together participants from schools, universities, adult education, community organisations, and policy to consider how cities can act as spaces for language development and cross-sectoral collaboration. More than one hundred participants attended the event on the UCL East campus.
Following a presentation of six case studies in the morning, which included talks by Jelena Ćalić, Ramona Gönczöl, and Eszter Tarsoly from UCL SSEES, focus group discussions formulated questions arising from participants’ individual experience and the case studies. A closing panel of policy advisors, teachers, academics, media experts, and subject-organisation specialists addressed the questions we proposed in a discussion which reflected multiple perspectives.
The case studies and discussions centred on the ways in which education can contribute to cultivating and capitalising on the UK’s cities’ multilingual energy and linguistic expertise. The symposium also addressed rising xenophobia and hostility to difference, alongside declining provision in modern languages, massive underfunding in ESOL, overwhelming neglect in heritage language education, and the siloed fragmentation of language education more generally.
The symposium was successful in enhancing cross-sector dialogue about these questions. New publications were proposed and new, multimodal forms of outreach considered, while participants forged new collaborations and possible partnerships. Most importantly, we looked at what it means to organise locally for language education, exploring the principles emerging for locally driven, inclusive, and critically informed strategies for language and asking in what ways cities can serve as sites for regenerating language education.
Main organisers on behalf of PLEJ: Dr Jelena Ćalić and Dr Eszter Tarsoly with support from postgraduate students Hayley Anderson and Zheyi Zhang, and our colleague Dr Yordanka Velkova.
