Multilingual comic making /  کثیر لسانی مزاحیہ سازی  / 多语言漫画制作 / Направи cи многоезичeн комикс/ Tworzenie komiksów wielojęzycznych

Join us for an interactive in-person workshop suitable for families with children in the 4-11 age range in which you will design and make your own multilingual comic strip. The workshop will include pre teaching on how to create a story board and develop characters for the comic.

There is no requirement of proficiency in another language to take part - you can use your home language to complete the comic, or you could choose a target language and use google translate to help with the words. Families will be provided with craft materials to make or draw the main characters in the comic and some props. 

Following storyboarding, families will be provided with ipads and introduced to an easy-to-use comic strip creator app. The final comic strips created will be downloaded and printed on site and available for families to take home. 

Globally, the mixing of languages and cultures is becoming increasingly prevalent as multicultural and superdiverse societies evolve. Our current and future working lives are influenced by increasing international mobility and require linguistic flexibility and cultural awareness.

Such work on shaping linguistic flexibility and cultural awareness begins in early childhood. However, for plurilingual families, supporting home language learning and fostering cultural knowledge is often an uphill struggle as institutional education policies rarely emphasise multilingualism as a strength.

In turn, this results in marginalising valuable multilingual home literacy practices and silencing multilingual forms of expression. Research has shown that multilingual parents often use arts based, making and creative activities to introduce home languages and cultural knowledge to their children.

Such making and creativity situates learning in a storytelling context, enabling children to express and reflect on evolving and hybrid identities. Understanding these practices better and building on them in contexts beyond the home seems imperative to understanding the barriers and enablers to a racially just and inclusive society.  

The event will be facilitated by Dr Ester Ehiyazaryan-White, Senior Lecturer in Childhood Studies and researcher in the area of multilingualism and translanguaging at Sheffield Hallam University and Julia Sexton, Senior Lecturer in Childhood Studies at Sheffield Hallam University and experienced play work practitioner and governor of Pitsmore Adventure Playground in Sheffield.  

Children and Families

The event aims to engage plurilingual families with young children (early childhood, broadly defined as 4 to 11 years old) – those who speak more than one language at home or who expose their children to aspects of their heritage culture or knowledge.

However, the event will also be open to families who have an interest in languages and wish to foster curiosity about languages and cultures in their children. The event takes a broad definition of family and welcomes older generations, for example where a grandparent or close relative speaks the home language or is the source of heritage culture, knowledge and practices.