School children to stage a unique Mini-Eurovision concert

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Phil Larkin, Modern Foreign Languages and Music Co-ordinator at St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School in Liverpool said:

“At first, the children looked at the German lyrics to our song and they weren’t sure if they would be able to learn them all, but after one session, they had cracked it! I’ve heard children singing it around school and getting all the words right, which is really impressive! We have a significant number of pupils for whom English is not their first language and I’m always amazed at how much language children can absorb.

“At St Patrick’s we believe learning languages should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world and that’s what this project helps to do.”