After the success of Arts Multilingual Week 2022, we are bringing it back from March 4th – 8th, 2024.
Join us from March 4th to March 8th in the Arts Student Centre to celebrate multilingualism during Arts Multilingual Week 2024! Immerse yourself in various activities designed to help students engage with the diversity of languages spoken at UBC – we will reflect on multilingualism as a practice, socialize across languages, and perform multilingualism through artistic means. From the Multilingual Poetry Slam and an Open Mic Night to our Speech Contest and Untranslatables Art Competition, there’s something for everyone to enjoy – and many prizes to be won!
Arts Multilingual Week Schedule and Event Registration
Language Tables and Club Showcase
(Wednesday, March 6th, 1 PM-4 PM, Arts Student Centre)
UBC Arts Multilingual Week invites UBC students to discover a multitude of language-related student clubs and departments at this year’s Language Tables and Club Showcase. This event is an excellent opportunity to mingle with multilingual professors and peers, explore course offerings, and find extracurricular activities to build community in your language(s) of interest.
Multilingual Poetry Slam
(Wednesday, March 6th @ 5:30 PM)
UBC Arts Multilingual Week’s second annual Multilingual Poetry Slam invites UBC students to deliver a spirited poetry reading from a multilingual perspective.
Students from all disciplines and language backgrounds are invited to register to recite either :
- a) their own original poem written in any language (or languages) other than English
- b) a poem that students have translated themselves from and into any language (e.g., from English to Italian, from English to Italian and Tibetan, from Italian to English, from Italian to English and Tibetan, from Italian to Tibetan and Japanese, etc.).
All members of the UBC community are most welcome to attend the competition, and this year’s prizes include Gift Certificates to the UBC Bookstore.
Multilingual Open Mic Night
(Thursday, March 7th @ 5:30 PM, Arts Student Centre)
UBC Arts Multilingual Week invites any member of the UBC community to attend Arts Multilingual Week’s “Fisch Out of Water” Open Mic Night! Join us for the opportunity to experiment in the performing arts while multilingually. Participants may perform in any language other than English or a combination of languages, including English. Hosted by CENES’s Dr. David Gramling, this non-competitive event offers a venue for performers to showcase their language skills through comedy (skit, routine, or multilingual stand-up), a song (instrumental or vocal) or a reading (poetic or literary). Please register here in advance to perform, but all members of the UBC Community are encouraged to attend and celebrate language diversity and multilingual creativity on the Vancouver campus!
Speech Contest: How Does Your Language See the World?
(Friday, March 8th @ 5:30 PM, Arts Student Centre)
UBC Arts Multilingual Week invites UBC students to join us for our second annual English-language Speech Contest! Students can sign up here to perform a three- to five-minute speech (in English) that engages this year’s theme: “How Does Your Language See the World?.” Students from all disciplines and language backgrounds are invited to explore a variety of approaches to this theme, from how language shapes our understanding of the world around us or embodies Indigenous worldviews to scientific perspectives on how language structures human perception. All UBC members are welcome to attend. This year’s prizes include Gift Certificates to the UBC Bookstore.
Untranslatables Art Competition
UBC Arts Multilingual Week invites UBC students to enter this year’s Untranslatables Competition by submitting digital media projects that creatively thematize phrases and words that only exist in a given language. Sign up here now and submit your digital media project by Friday, March 2nd @ midnight to qualify for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prizes and to be showcased during our Arts Multilingual Week programming.
All members of the UBC community are invited to compete, and this year’s prizes include Gift Certificates to the UBC Bookstore.
