Kolibrí Festivaali

Kolibrí – the Ibero-American children’s cultural festival  is a way to experience multiculturalism and multilingualism in Finland through children’s eyes. Kolibrí offers an artistic, recreational and educational program in a multicultural setting for all families, irrespective of nationality or language. The events and workshops organized  are open to all, free of charge and carried out in several languages.  From the website you find information also in Spanish and in Portuguese.

The festival is produced by Ninho Monikulttuurikeskus ry, (www.ninho.ry) a grassroots association working for a more multicultural and plural Finland. Besides the festival the association also organises a biannual seminar on children and bilingualism, promotes Ibero-American children’s literature and illustration projects in Finland and supports several exchange programs between Finnish and Ibero-American artists working around children’s arts and culture, with a special emphasis in literature and illustration.

Most of the events of Kolibrí take place in Libraries in Espoo and Cultural Centers in Helsinki.

Photos from events organized by Kolibrí festivaali

Storytelling by Verónica Miranda
architecture by Carolina Isasi & Laura Zuvillaga
music by Aurinko ry with Clara Petrozzi, Grisell MacDonell and Jordy Valderrama
illustration by Kolibrí honored guest 2017: Isidro Ferrer.

Photos credits: Kolibrí Festivaali.

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Tema morsmål – support for multilingual education

Tema Morsmål is a website that offers resources to support different mother tongues and multilingual work in child care, mother tongue education and bilingual education in schools.

It offers learning resources in a wide variety of mother tongues for all employees in kindergartens and schools, focusing especially on multilingual staff in kindergartens, mother tongue teachers, bilingual teachers and teachers in special Norwegian schools and for minority language children and parents.

Tema Morsmål communicates current information about native language and multilingualism, both nationally and internationally, from research environments to educational practice and builds networks for the site’s current audiences.

The website’s main language is Norwegian but it has also versions in Arabic , in Dari, in Sorani Kurdish, in Lithuanian, in Pashto, in Persian, in Polish, in Russian, in Somali, in Spanish, in Tamil, in Thai, in Tigrinya, in Turkish and in Urdu.

Nypon förlag – lättläst också på andra språk

Nypon förlag is a publishing house located in Helsingborg, Sweden, specialized in books that are easy to read (lättläst/ selkokieli). It publishes books mainly in Swedish but also in other languages, either as bilingual or monolingual publications. The languages of the collection  include Arabic, Dari, English, French, German,  Meänkieli, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Somali, Spanish, Swedish and Tigrinya.   

The mission of Nypon förlaget is that all the children have an opportunity to become great readers, develope their language(s), imagination, the pleasure of reading and thus their learning skills.

Litteraturcentrum Uppsala

Litteraturcentrum Uppsala  is a collaboration of Studiefrämjandet, Kultur i länet, Kulturrådet, Uppsala city, Uppsala regional library and Svenska Pen. Its aim is to support local reading and writing and the regional literary field including a multilingual context. The centre is based in Uppsala, and it is a part of the culture plan of the Uppsala region.

The people involved in the activities of Litteraturcentrum Uppsala use at least the following languages: Swedish, Sami, Arabic, Bengali, Dari, French, German, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Wolof, Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Persian, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Estonian, Kokborok, Beluch, English, Tamil, Georgian, Turkish etc.

 

Anisur Rahman, the project leader for LItteraturcentrum Uppsala describes the work:

“We are interested in both the artistic and social effects of literature. We work locally, regionally, nationally and internationally, and have established productive partnerships with several organizations, including literary organizations, local theatres and schools. Our centre is now a platform for both professional and amateur writers in diverse mother languages. It is a meeting point for native, foreign, immigrant and exiled writers. We publish more than a hundred writers a year in our literary anthology from our creative writing workshops every year. We host more than a hundred literary events a year.

Our centre in Uppsala together with Litteraturcentrum in Tranås, Litteratur resurscentrum in Norbotten and similar project in Jämtland-Harjedalen is now Sweden’s international literary checkpoint where we have growing network and exchange with different continents. All are welcome on board to read and write in diverse languages in defense of free word and free thought.”

Anisur Rahman is Uppsala’s guest writer 2009–2011 in the ICORN system and currently project leader for Litteraturcentrum Uppsala, Studiefräjandet Uppsalaregion, http://www.litteraturcentrum.se/

Móðurmál – the Association on Bilingualism

Móðurmál (Mother Tongue) is an NGO founded in Reykjavik in 1994 as The Parents of Bilingual Children Association (Samtök foreldra tvítyngdra barna). It supports multilingualism by teaching languages to bi- or plurilingual children and develops structured language programs with clearly defined curricula and goals. It has offered instruction in over twenty languages for plurilingual children since 1994.

Móðurmál offers of has offered teaching in Albanian, in Arabic, in Czech, in Chinese, in English, in Filipino, in French, in German, in Ghanaian Languages Ewe & Twi, in Indonesian, in Italian, in Japanese, in Korean, in Latvian, in Lithuanian, in Nepalese, in Polish, in Portuguese, in Russian, in Serbian, in Slovakian, in Spanish, in Swedish, in Thai, in Turkish, in Ukrainian, and in Víetnamese

Móðurmál has received the following awards:

2008: “Vel að verki staðið” (“For A Job Well Done”) certificate of recognition from the Intercultural Centre for Mother Tongue’s active work on immigrantion issues in Iceland. The award was presented by the President of Iceland Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson.

2014: “Samfélagsverðlaun Fréttablaðsins“ (The Society Award of Frettabladid) in category “From Generation to Generation“. The award was presented by the President of Iceland Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson.

2016: “Foreldraverðlaun Heimilis og skóla” (Parents’ award from the National Parents’ Association) for mother tongue teaching of bilingual children

 

Ós Pressan

Ós Pressan is a non-profit initiative designed to think of literature in an updated way, to bring out and promote new authors, to create an inclusive, multilingual writing community and to challenge the reality of the publishing industry in Iceland.

From Ós Pressan’s website you can find the newest collective publications of the community and presentations of the authors and other artists or journalists linked to this community that includes a wider range of writers, languages and visions.

The writers connected to Ós Pressan write in Icelandic, English, Spanish and Polish.

Sivuvalo – Is This Finnish Literature?

Sivuvalo project is a creative platform for writers who write in other than the two national languages in Finland. It offers information about transnational writers, edits publications and organizes multimedia poetry readings, workshops and other artistic collaborations.

The coordinator of the project is Peruvian poet Roxana Crisólogo and the producer of “Mutant Language” multimedia poetry evenings  is Mexican poet and designer Daniel Malpica.

Sivuvalo´s website also includes a wide link list of writers who write in different languages in Finland.
Among them there are writers who write in Arabic, Burmese, English, Icelandic, Kurdish, Persian, Russian, Northern Sámi, Somali and Spanish.

 

NolitchX, Nordic Literatures in Change and Exchange

Nolitch X, Nordic Literatures in Change and Exchange, is a literature project (2017) with the objective of creating networks of immigrant language writers in the Nordic region. This initiative is a Nordic collaboration between associations, groups and individual writers from Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Sweden. NolitchX has support from Nordic Culture Fund, Nordic Culture Point and Malmö Stad.

Multilingual Library, Helsinki, Finland

The Multilingual Library is located in Pasila Library, Helsinki and its collections cover over 80 languages. Customers living outside of Helsinki can order all materials to their local libraries around Finland.

The Multilingual library also hosts a blog about current topics related to literature and multilingualism. The blog has blogs in English and occasionally in other languages, e.g. in Somali, Persian and Arabic.

Customers who cannot find their own language among the language collection can suggest items to add to the collection.

In the book collection you find books at least in the following languages:

Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Bengali, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Byelorussian, Catalan,  Chinese,  Czech, Danish, Dari, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek,  Greenlandic, Gujarati,  Hebrew,  Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Karelian, Khmer, Komi, Korean, Kurdish, Latin, Latvian, Lingala, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Mari, Nepalese, Norwegian, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romani, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Sámi, Sign language, Slovakian, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamili, Tatar, Telugu,  Thai, Tigrinya,  Turkish,  Ukrainian,  Urdu, Vietnamese and Yiddish

The mother languages of the permanent staff at Pasila Library, which is the physical location of Multilingual Library, include Finnish, Swedish, English, Russian, Estonian and Somali.

 

 

International Library, Stockholm, Sweden

The International Library is part of the Stockholm Public Library and it is in central Stockholm. It has a multilingual collection of books in around 200 languages. People living elsewhere in Sweden can order books from the international library to their local libraries.

The library´s website has language versions in Swedish, in Arabic, in English, in French, in Chinese, in Persian, in Russian and in Spanish.

In the webpage of the International Library you can also find interesting archives related to multilingual issues, like the interview archive and book recommendations for and from readers in different languages, apart of the previously mentioned at least in Polish, Bulgarian, Portuguese and Urdu.

The collection includes books in the following languages: Acholi, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Ashanti, Azerbaijani, Baluchi, Bambara, Basque, Bemba, Bengali, Berber language, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Buli, Burmese,  Catalan, Cebuano, Chewa, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Dari, Edo, Efik, English, Greenlandic, Estonian, Ewe, Fanti, French, Fulani,  Galician, Geez, Georgian, Greek, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrean, Hindi, Igbo, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Kikuyu, Kirgisyan, Kongo (Kikongo), Korean, Krio, Kurdish (Kurmandji and Sorani), Kymric (Cymric/Welsh), Lao/ Laos,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Det flerspråklige bibliotek, Oslo, Norway

Det flerspråklige bibliotek, Oslo, Norway:
The multilingual collection of the National Library of Norway has books and films in 69 languages. Libraries around Norway can order materials for their customers.

The library also offers special packages with books and other materials for multilingual reading promotion. One of the tools  are the adventure bags with bilingual editions of selected stories in several different languages. For the celebration of mother language day there are special material packages as well. Other institutions can book these materials through their local library.