Creativity, multilingualism and community building are themes we will discuss at this year’s opening event for Mother Tongues Festival.

Creativity, multilingualism and community building are themes we will discuss at this year’s opening event for Mother Tongues Festival.
Check out the many family activities at this year’s Mother Tongues Festival, celebrating linguistic diversity through the arts!
Mother Tongues Festival is around the corner (16-18 February 2023 in Tallaght), and now, we can FINALLY share the entire programme with everyone!
Leading up to Mother Tongues Festival 2023, we are excited to present our Language Explorers workshop series with Fernanda Ferrari!
Festivals are unique cultural moments that provide the opportunity to experience something together as communities.
Today, in celebration of Ireland's rich artistic and cultural tapestry, we are excited to share with you the programme for Mother Tongues Festival 2021!
EFA President Jan Briers is delighted to see that the EFFE Laureates 2019-2020 represent Europe’s diverse cultural scene and different disciplines from digital arts to opera. These festivals were selected from a list of 715 festivals with the EFFE Label which stands for festivals that are committed to the arts, their communities and demonstrate openness to the world. They are all presented together with more than 2000 festivals on FestivalFind
.
Along with the decision of the EFFE International Jury on the EFFE Laureates, the European Festivals Association is glad to announce EFFE’s Audience Choice. The online voting is now open on FestivalFinder.eu and allows audiences from all over the world until the EFFE Awards Ceremony on 26 September to cast their vote for their favourite festival from amongst the EFFE Laureates.
To vote for our festival visit https://www.festivalfinder.eu/awards/effes-audience-choice-2019-2020
Imagine a place where people have fun speaking many different languages, a place where children and adults learn about culture, stories and languages through art-making, music and dance! This is what the Mother Tongues Festival was all about!
Over the last two weekends we hosted more than 50 events in over 20 languages, we met artists, professionals and performers from India, Ethiopia, Russia, Libya, Taiwan, Japan, Germany, Italy, Poland, Turkey, Egypt, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Spain, France just to name a few! They filled rooms and entire venues in Galway and in Tallaght with their talent, through workshops, talks, poetry, music, dances and science. Participants of the Festival had a chance to listen to multilingual poetry, try Bollywood dancing, draw Irish wild animals with a Polish illustrator, learn Chinese calligraphy, meet musicians from Congo and Nigeria and learn Japanese through origami making!
The aim of Mother Tongues Festival is to promote languages and cultures in Ireland through the arts. Most of the people we spoke to at the events told us that they were happy to learn something new through languages that are currently spoken in Ireland and many families said they loved the opportunity to cultivate and share their community languages outside of the home.
As we pack our Festival suitcase and go home to prepare our 2020 edition we are filled with the positive energy gained at the event.
There are so many people we need to thank! We are extremely grateful to RuaRed, the Civic Theatre and Galway2020 for believing in our project and making it happen in Dublin and Galway. Without the support of the Arts Council, South Dublin County Council and the Small Town Big Ideas Initiative our festival could not have been so successful. We are honoured to have been granted funding to pursue our dream! The many sponsors that have come on board this year have allowed us to make it an even more special event! We are very grateful to RTE’, the Ambassade de France en Irlande, the Goethe Institut, Languages Connect, the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Dublin, St. Kilian’s Deutsche Schule in Dublin, the Dublin School of Mandarin Chinese, Your English Language School in Dublin, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Brady Languages, The Stop B&B, Atlas Language School, Seachtain na Gaeilge le Energia, the Chester Beatty Library, Unuhi, Irish Architecture Foundation, Áras na nGael, Creative Ireland and Massimo Russo.
And last but not least, do not forget that the festival is only good craic if you come!
A MASSIVE thank you, grazie, merci, gracias, obrigados, mulțumesc, go raibh maith agat teşekkürler
to all the hundreds of people who have attended our two Festivals!
See you in 2020!
If you would like to be the first to know, subscribe to the Mother Tongues Festival Newsletter.
About the Competition
The first Mother Tongues Art Competition was instituted by Mother Tongues to celebrate International Mother to celebrate International Mother Language Day and the International Year of Indigenous Languages within the Mother Tongues Festival. The goal of the competition is to explore the role of language in our everyday life.
Everyone between the ages of 4 and 18 is welcome to submit an entry.
All works submitted will be exhibited at the Mother Tongues Festival in Dublin on 2nd and 3rd of March 2019. Three prizes will be awarded for each category.
Prizes will be awarded at a ceremony in Rua Red Arts Center, Blessington Rd, Tallaght, Dublin 24.
Subject
The subject of this competition is “My world of languages”
Size of artwork
Your entry should not be smaller than A4 (29.7cm x 21.0cm) or larger than A3 (59.4cm x 42.0cm). Entries should not be mounted.
Use of Materials
You may use any type of paper, white, coloured, rough or smooth. The work that you submit may be drawn or painted in pencil, charcoal, pen and ink, crayon, pastel, watercolour, gouache, acrylics, oils, poster colour and collage. The work may be a print created from a lino block, wood block or any other method, and your artwork may be submitted on canvas. The work may be digitally produced. Digitally produced artwork may be emailed to the address education@mothertongues.ie
A photograph or scanned image of an original artwork will not be considered.
Originality
Your work should be original and unaided.
Number of Entries
You may submit only one entry per individual. Only individual entries will be accepted and they may be submitted directly by you, by your school or by your art group.
Information Required
Your submission should include the following information on the back of your entry:
Name and age
Category and title of the entry
Your home address or your school address
A signature of your teacher or your guardian
A contact number
An email address
Please note:
Your age as of the closing date of the Competition (1st February 2019).
One signature from a teacher will be sufficient to cover all entries from a school.
The Closing Date
The closing date for receipt of entries is Friday 1st February 2019.
Sending Your Entry
Please post your entry to:
My Art School of Dance and Art
CityHouse, Newmarket, Merchants Quay, Dublin 8
Categories
4 to 6 years
7 to 10 years
11 to 14 years
15-18 years
Special Category
The Special Category encourages participants with a physical or intellectual disability to submit entries in free expression without the restriction of the competition’s official theme if they so wish.
Quick Checklist – Rules of entry
To enter, you must be under 19 years of age by 1st February 2019 and you must be resident on the island of Ireland.
You should print the following information (IN BLOCK CAPITALS) on the back of each entry:
-Name and age
-Category and title of the entry
-School name, school address, school email address, school telephone number and school teacher or Art teacher’s name.
If you are submitting artwork to the Competition that has been undertaken in your school or at an external art class, your school teacher or Art Teacher’s signature will also be required. If you are submitting artwork to the Competition that has been undertaken in your home, your parent or guardian’s signature will be required instead in addition to your home address, your home telephone number and your home email address.
– You may enter only one piece of artwork. Only individual entries will be accepted. A photograph or scanned image of an original artwork will not be considered under any circumstances.
– Your entry should be submitted in flat format and should remain within the specified size guidelines. Framed entries will not be accepted under any circumstances.
– The closing date for entries is 1s February 2019.
– The Judging Panel is responsible for the allocation of awards. The decision of the Judging Panel is final and no correspondence will be entered into regarding that decision.
– Mother Tongues will not accept liability for loss or damage to any work submitted.
– All entries together with the artists’ details (name, age, school or town) may be used in publicity campaigns after the Mother Tongues Art Competition and in future Competitions. Photographs of the winners together with their names and ages may be used in publicity campaigns where the parents or guardians of the winners have given their consent.
– The rules of the Competition may not be changed or modified and will strictly be applied.
– All personal information supplied will be used by Mother Tongues solely for the administration and management of the Art Competition.
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