Related documents & links

The on-going Language Rich Europe project, led by Martin Hope, Director of the British Council in Brussels and President of EUNIC in Brussels, and co-financed by the European Commission has taken a step further and has now started the research phase.

Background information

The Language Rich Europe (LRE) project aims to underline good practice and to promote multilingualism in order to create a more socially stable and prosperous Europe, based on intercultural dialogue. Over 25 partners from all across Europe, including EUNIC in Brussels and 5 EUNIC member institutes (British Council, Goethe-Institut, Det Danske Kulturinstitut, Instituto Camões and Instituto Cervantes) are currently conducting an analysis of policies and practices on multilingualism across 20 European countries and will compare the results against European recommendations.

The steering committee of the LRE project, to which EUNIC in Brussels belongs, has recently finalised the field manual that will serve as a basis for the research conducted across Europe.. Seven strands have been defined according to seven domains of language use, from official documents on language diversity to language teaching in primary education to language use in public services and media. For each strand of the project, the field manual provides guidelines on how to conduct the research as well as key readings. The results will be presented in the Language Rich Europe Index - A European Index on Multilingual Policies and Practices, in the form of an innovative tool: interactive spider graphs. This will help visualise the role of multilingualism in the participating countries and highlight good practice. In order to measure the results and be able to present the final index, a comprehensive questionnaire has been finalised and sent to renowned national research partners who will be collecting the data. The data will then be reviewed by independent national experts and analysed by Babylon, the Centre for Studies of the Multicultural Society at Tilburg. Professionals from various sectors will also be invited to discuss the results, share good practice and develop action points for their area of work.

To emphasise the beginning of the research phase, the first LRE brochure has now been published in 18 languages and distributed to all LRE network members, explaining the project, its impact and how it can contribute to creating the opportunity to encourage discussion across society. The brochure can be downloaded in several languages by clicking on the links to the left of this article.

Parallel to the research, experts and partners already have the possibility to share their experience and knowledge or leave comments onto the Language Rich Blog. The purpose is to enhance informal discussion around multilingualism and language use among civil society, as languages affect us all, in a way or another and contribute to cultural diversity.

For further information on the project please contact:

Martin Hope
Project Director - Language Rich Europe
Martin.Hope@britishcouncil.be

Ulla-Alexandra Mattl
LRE Partner - EUNIC in Brussels
co-ordinator@eunic-brussels.eu

Added: 20 May 2011