Workshop Leader for Mother Tongue Other Tongue Creative Day

The Manchester Poetry Library are currently recruiting workshop facilitators for a Campus Creative Day on 8 July.  This will be a paid opportunity for up to 8 students with previous experience of running workshops with young people.  The successful candidates will be responsible for devising and leading a creative workshop with a group of 12-15 secondary-age pupils who have entered this year’s Mother Tongue Other Tongue competition. 

To give a little background: Mother Tongue Other Tongue is a multi-lingual poetry competition for 8-18 year olds.  Every year, around 40 schools submit entries; Mother Tongue invites pupils who have a heritage language other than English to share a poem from that language – either an original piece, or a poem shared or found; Other Tongue encourages pupils learning a language other than English to be creative in that language by writing a poem.  Entries are judged on an accompanying commentary, written in English and explain their personal language story, their reason for writing or sharing the poem and saying something about it. 

On 8 July, all schools who enter work for the competition are invited to bring pupils in for a creative day. One hour workshops on the day can take a variety of forms, as long as they are creative and fun and build in some way on the idea of performance and writing and take on board the competition’s ethos of sharing and celebration of many languages and cultures.  There are no concrete expectations from the workshops, only that they will be engaging and creative.  After the workshops take place, all the groups will come together for a short plenary, where workshop leaders can share what their group have done. 

This is a great opportunity for anyone interested in devising and leading a workshop for young people.  If you think you might be interested in exploring an idea for a workshop, please pitch your idea in the form of a short expression of interest outlining your workshop idea, giving an indication of the age group you think you’d like to work with.  Please also provide any other relevant information about your interest in this project or previous experience. 

You must be available to deliver a workshop on 8 July.  Payment will be 8 hours at j4S basic rate to include planning time and delivery.  Applications need to be submitted by midnight on Sunday 31 May for initial consideration.  This gives time for workshop development and confirmation during June, ready for 8 July delivery.      

For further details about the Mother Tongue Other Tongue competition, please see Mother Tongue Other Tongue | Manchester Metropolitan University