Roman Coventry at the Resonate Words and Voices Roadshow

As part of the Resonate Words and Voices Roadshow on Sunday 19th September, Dr Paul Grigsby (left) will be on hand at the Assembly Festival Garden to talk about Roman Coventry and the language spoken here. We will have lots of Latin and language based activities, and Dr Grigsby will be happy to chat about Roman Coventry and to talk about his Roman Coventry Project. It will be great to see some of our Coventry school-children and their families at the event, or to chat with teachers about introducing the Roman Coventry Project into their school.

So do come along and have some fun learning about Coventry's ancient past!

Outline of the Day

Children and families (and indeed those of any age!) drop into the Treehouse from 11am to have a go at a range of interactive activities celebrating how multi-lingual and multi-cultural Coventry is. Find out more about when Latin was spoken here and how many languages we now speak in the city. Design a t-shirt with a favourite language slogan of your choice. Find the global roots of words we use every day. Try your hand at translating animal noises in different languages, and join us as we use Disney songs to demonstrate how Google translate doesn’t always have the answer! Make up your own language poem and contribute your sense of what speaking different languages brings to your life.

In the Piccolo Theatre, people of any age can join us for a series of fascinating interactive talks from 12-3pm, covering topics like the cities and languages Coventry is twinned with across the globe; how the Coventry accent has shifted through the ages; try your hand at learning Chinese from scratch, and a deeper dive into the over 100 languages spoken in Coventry.

Piccolo Theatre:

12-12.45pm - Twinned Cities of Coventry and their languages – Michael Hammond

12.45-1.30pm - Coventry’s Changing Accent – Chris Strelluf

1.30-2.15pm - Coventry’s 120+ languages – Ellen Smith-Dennis

2.15-3pm - Learn Chinese in 40 mins – Qian Liu and Zhiyan Guo

3-4.30pm - Short Coventry Life Story Films (with Intros to each one): Roma Allotment Project, Home Truths project, Noises of the Past, Cinema 3, Brutalist Architectures, Comrades of the City, Imagineer Initiative

For teenagers and adults, join us in the Treehouse from midday to engage with a series of interactive booths, workshops and performances, that speak to the different stories we tell – and need to tell – in and about Coventry. Learn more about Binley Colliery, chat with the artists capturing the mechanical inventions imagined by Coventry’s school children and try your hand at combined story-telling and weaving as well as story-telling and origami. Pot seeds while hearing more about the Roma allotment project. Find out more from the Queer and Coloured and Colonial Hangover research projects about different life-stories of our city. Watch performances from story-tellers of the future, live readings of personal stories related to racism in Coventry’s past and join in the fun of a live performance of poetic song and giddha dance! Catch up with a curated series of short films related to these and other life-story projects in the Piccolo Theatre 3-4.30pm.

Treehouse:

- Interactive Activities and Displays running all day from 11am, with specific interactive workshops at the following times:

11-12pm - Where Google Translate wont help: Disney songs and the importance of language learning

12-1pm - Weaving and Telling stories

1-2pm - Pot seeds and the Roma Allotment project

2-3pm - The Colonial Hangover in Coventry

3-4pm - Queer and Coloured in Coventry

4-5pm - Sounds of the Future – the voices of Coventry’s future

5-6pm - Alternative Trails Performance – poetic song and giddha performance

6-7pm - Racist Tones Readings – live readings of personal experiences of racism in Coventry’s past.