Trans-lingual Express is a Europe-wide language learning project and international exchange programme, linking young people in London with their peers in France, Germany, Spain and Italy through the medium of film-making. Trans-lingual Express won the 2008 European Award for Languages - presented by Sir Trevor McDonald - for the project's contribution to innovative approaches to language learning. Eastside also received the Italian Embassy Language Prize for the best project involving Italian. Sixth-form students from London participate in week long intensive bi-lingual workshops to learn the basic fundamentals of documentary film-making, working in French, German, Spanish or Italian with bi-lingual professional film-makers. Participants have the opportunity to make short films in their second language which are then exchanged with students overseas who are also making films, but in English. The films explore the young people's experiences of culture in their own capital cities and provide valuable insights into the lives of their European participants. Similarly, the films made in this country accurately reflect teenage life in London today. Students are given very broad themes such as 24-hours, Fashion, Sounds of the City, Food, Transport and Creativity as starting points for their films and are encouraged to take a creative approach towards exploring the themes. This has resulted in some very varied and interesting short films (see below). On the European Day of Languages 2007, we premièred the films made by young people in London, Paris and Berlin at the British Film Institute (BFI) on London's Southbank and we welcomed our young film makers from Paris and Berlin to London for the screening. On the European Day of Languages 2008, we did the same thing, but with students from Madrid and Rome who came to London to watch their films alongside their English peers. The film premières were followed by workshops in which the students could practice their language skills together. The project was set up in response to the dramatic decline in young people choosing to continue to study languages from the age of fourteen. Although we have now completed filming across Europe, Trans-lingual Express has not yet reached its final destination - we are currently creating an educational resource to support Modern Foreign Language teaching. The resource will be available from April 2010 onwards. If you would like a free copy of our Trans-lingual Express resource pack or be involved in our dissemination events, please contact us.

Trans-lingual Express - International student films
Trans-lingual Express - News article in SecEd magazine

Power In The Voice is a British Council spoken word project to enable young people in Southern Africa and the UK to find their voices and express themselves under the guidance of international performance poets, rap artists and storytellers. Over three years, the project involved 3,300 school children and reached more than 25 million people. Power In The Voice brought together young people from Botswana, Mauritius, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the UK. Eastside was commissioned by the British Council to plan and deliver a programme of workshops inspired by the rhythms of speech and song in Africa, to mirror the activities already running in the six Southern African countries. The resulting project enabled 300 students from nine London schools to write and perform their own original poetry and develop their performance skills under the guidance of some of the finest spoken word artists (mentors) working in Britain and Africa today. Over a period of four months, the participants took part in intensive poetry workshops led by their mentors and were able to write, re-draft, edit and perfect their poems. Each of the participating schools then selected two teams to perform at the Power In The Voice (UK) Finals, which was a live literature event at London's Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly Circus, hosted by Rt. Hon. Lord Kinnock (Chair of the British Council). The competition was judged by a panel including Southern African artists and chaired by Radio One DJ; Nihal. The winning poem by Saints from St. Aloysius College in North London explored the pain of absent fathers and cleverly incorporated rap poetry with elements of the Lord's Prayer. As well as being treated to some thought provoking poetry written by the young finalists, the audience was able to watch and listen to performances from the Southern African artists which encapsulated a wide range of spoken word from storytelling, through acapella singing to hip hop and rap. The winning team went on to represent the UK at the Power In The Voice International Festival in Africa, where the 15-year old students had the amazing opportunity to visit Botswana and build relationships with young people from across the African continent. Eastside also took the opportunity to run a unique Anglo-African skills exchange in The Lower Eastside where London performance poets and Southern African artists had the unique opportunity to work together to exchange skills and best practice. The British Council shortly plan to relaunch Power In The Voice, please contact us if you would like to be involved.

Our Father - Power In The Voice winning poem

Adobe Youth Voices (AYV) aims to empower youth in under-served communities in the United States, Canada, India and the UK with real-world experiences and 21st-century multimedia tools (including Adobe software) to communicate and share their ideas, exhibit their creative potential and take action in the communities they live in. Using video, audio, digital photography, animation, and web design, AYV empowers young people to explore and comment on their world and take an active role in issues they feel strongly about. The project also provides young people with a forum in which to share their vision and voice for a public purpose - via film screenings, international festivals and on the Internet. Eastside's youth voices project links young people in London with young people in Seattle (USA) through the media of film, photography and spoken word. The focus of our youth voices project was very much on developing the skills of young people and on building on their interests. Our programme had several different strands. Young people who had never previously engaged with media projects were given an opportunity to develop their skills and to showcase their local area through film and photography. We wanted to go beyond skills development with this project and to encourage young people to celebrate what is positive and to showcase their creativity and to share this with young people across the world. We made links with Reel Grrls in Seattle and explored ways to connect young people in London and Seattle through poetry and moving image. Eastside is committed to giving young people the opportunity to develop to their full potential and the second part of our project gives young people to take their skills further. Young filmmakers and young poets work together to produce a film representation of their poetry. We were delighted to be able to host the Singapore National slam champions aged 14 to 16 on their visit to London in summer 2009 as well as link young London poets and filmmakers. Youth Voices gives young people a valuable opportunity to make their voices heard and it was important for Eastside to focus on the positive creativity of young people to counter the negative press that young people encounter in the mainstream media.

Adobe Youth Voices - Eastside's UK films

Gallery Explorations is a project that was first run in partnership with leading financial firm UBS, who asked if Eastside could develop a project that would provide three of their world-wide operations divisions with some unique and exciting team building exercises, that would also add value to their community programme. There was one catch - the operations divisions were located in London, Hong Kong and Stamford (USA) and it was important that all the team members were able to participate equally in the same project. Eastside recognised how much business volunteers enjoyed being reading and number partners (visiting schools to listen to children reading and to help them to develop their literacy and numeracy skills) and just how much the individuals involved, got from the process of mentoring. Therefore we decided to try to replicate this in an arts context. After some thought, we invited business volunteers and young people from all three cities to visit their local art galleries together and to share their experiences. This provided a perfect opportunity for both the children and their mentors to share new experiences and to learn from one another. We developed training for the employee volunteers which was delivered internationally through telephone conferencing and by engaging the Community Affairs departments in each country. In London, Eastside paired up with a local primary school where the children had already been studying artists whose work was on display at Tate Britain and we decided to focus on these works during the UK part of the project. The year 5 children were very excited to meet the business volunteers from UBS' London office, and many of the children began to explain the things they had learnt to their mentors. The mentors in turn were happy to listen and point out interesting connections they were able to make and some even returned to the gallery the following weekend with their own children. At the end of the visit, each child created a personalised post card with the help of their mentors and wrote a short message to their counterparts in Hong Kong and Stamford giving the highlights of their visit. The children from overseas also sent postcards about their similar experiences. The project provided an unique and rewarding experience for both children and adults alike, as well as a new way to engage with art. Eastside is hoping to repeat the project involving other global companies that have offices around the world. If you work for a company that might like to take part in Gallery Explorations, we would like to hear from you.

Parlez-vous Français? is an imaginative project that works well for teaching modern foreign languages to Year 6 primary school children. It also helps to develop speaking and listening skills and increases cultural awareness and understanding. The project involves a visiting French storyteller and is ideal for creating links between secondary schools and their feeder primaries as the project can also involve sixth form students by giving them the responsibility of filming the storyteller's visit, this enables the older students to help the younger students with their language skills and to act as role models. Parlez-vous Français? uses drama games as an introduction to French which works well, especially with pupils who may have only just started learning the language. It rapidly develops vocabulary and helps the pupils to listen in another language. Fairy stories and folk tales which the pupils know well and understand are used as the primary source material. This enables pupils to guess any words that they don't know in French and allows them to develop their confidence enough to recognise key vocabulary and to develop their own 'interpretation skills.' The older students can help to mentor in these sessions and the impact on the younger children is immediately apparent, they are often very proud to work with older students and happy to learn from them. The drama workshops apply a number of principles used regularly in language teaching; repetition and re-iteration - explaining the same thing in a number of ways and speaking in both languages. Warm-ups are conducted entirely in French, but are simple, encouraging retention and focus for the tasks ahead. A similar approach is taken to name games and ice breaking exercises which are used to facilitate improvisation. The drama preparation work is followed by the visit of the French storyteller. Using a French performer gives added value to the project and pupils are respectful of the fact that the storyteller has travelled to their country just to meet them and tell them stories. The storyteller focusses on the ritual of storytelling and pupils are asked to join in with words and phrases that they know and to physicalise elements of the story. The fun nature of the project means that children naturally remember the words that go with the actions, both in English and in French. The project can be filmed by the older students as a linked language project, including voice overs (in French), and can be shown to the participating group or used as a teaching resource for the other language classes in the school. 

Parlez-vous Français? - student film

Mon-Lon takes its name from Montreal and London - the project is a virtual exchange between students in the two cities, exploring the similarities and differences of teenage life through the medium of film making. Most young people studying French in London look to Paris for cultural input, we believe that it is equally important for students to learn about life in other Francophone regions, so Eastside linked up with Quebecois youth media company Studio Nexus based in Montreal, Canada, to create an exchange of films made in the student's second languages; Montreal is the second largest French speaking city after Paris. The French speaking Canadian students made their films in English and the young people from London made their films in French. Mon-Lon focused on youth activities and interests in each city including sports, shopping, history, diversity, fashion, culture, food and music. To get round the fact that the students were not able to cross the Atlantic to meet one another, Eastside worked with the same Associate Artist on both halves of the project - a Quebecois film director who taught bi-lingually in both countries. Not only did students learn the basics of filmmaking they were also posed the challenge of scripting their films in a way that would allow a response from their peers 'across the pond'. The project is devised so that the student reports intercut throughout the film and the young people in Canada directly respond to the students in England, giving a like for like account. Students were challenged to develop different skills including; interviewing, voice over and presentation to camera, as well as carrying out research about their own cities and about the city they were corresponding with. The films produced in London, include interviews carried out at Arsenal Football Club and at the Institut Francais, the students own take on the English ways to enjoy an egg (with soldiers of course!) and a tangle with chopsticks in china town. In Montreal, students demonstrated how to make pate chinois, introduced their sporting heroes (ice hockey and not football prevails) and through a series of vox pops, a diverse and fun city emerges. Although London continues to play an important role as a major European city, many European languages have now become community languages spoken by immigrant families in London and Mon-Lon will continue to explore these community languages and the cultures they originate from. Future projects will include explorations of French in Africa and the Caribbean (Senegal and Martinique) and Spanish as spoken in Latin America.

Mon-Lon - International student films

Eastside produced and delivered the education and outreach programme as part of Free The Word 2008 - International PEN's major new literature festival in London, celebrating writers and readers from around the world. Free The Word gives voice to some of the world's most inspiring writers and reaches out to London's diverse audiences. Eastside focussed on European writers and successfully engaged more than 100 young people across three strands: Moving Words: Young people, poets and spoken word artists working together to create 4 literary walks around the Southbank as part of the main festival programme. Migrating Words: inter-generational storytelling involving parents and their young children. Slam the Word: poetry workshops culminating in a poetry slam and a showcase event at the Young Vic Theatre. Throughout the festival weekend, Moving Words involved a group of young performers leading visitors around the Southbank on a series of poetry trails which explored the theme of 'the writer next door' and incorporated site-specific poetry in some unexpected places. The site for each performance gave the audience an opportunity to take part in a dialogue about freedom of expression as well as re-assessing their views on emergent writers. A highlight for the performers was when young French writer, Faiza Guene attended the walk in which her work featured prominently - speaking as it does so clearly to young people from displaced cultures - this underlined the message that young writers in London are not only part of a community within their own local neighbourhoods but part of a much larger international community. Participants of Slam the Word were also given their own performance platform at Festival in a Thimble which showcased the festival highlights and gave participants the opportunity to share the stage and the spotlight with writers as celebrated as Sir Tom Stoppard. Eastside also teamed up with the writers collective '26' to offer short mentorships to some of the the participants; these mentorships led to the creation of a longer mentorship with the brand director of Orange. From 2010, the outreach and education programme is set to get even bigger; Eastside is planning to establish a regular writing group in the run up to the next festival, we will also be creating an international writing exchange uniting young people's voices from around the world, we will be devising more site specific poetry and our inter-generational storytelling will find a performance platform at the festival too. To find out more or to get involved, please contact us. 

Free The Word - Poetry from the 2008 festival's education and outreach programme

Dance In France is a project which is linked to the Fête de la Musique - an annual day of free music held in Paris each year on 21st June - (the day of the summer solstice) Fête de la Musique, organised by the French Ministry for Culture, is an international celebration of music and dance, designed to encourage both amateur and professional performers, dancers and entertainers to all join together on the streets of Paris, with hundreds of musicians gathering in the parks, cafés and public spaces of Paris, to give free performances and concerts throughout the city. In June 2009 Eastside, working in partnership with Magic Window Paris, took a group of young people that had been working on a dance project in London, via the Eurostar, to France where they took part in a cultural exchange with a group of teenage dancers from Paris. The London students worked with young people from the Collège Rochefoucauld and Sevres College in Paris. The groups from France and the UK worked together bi-lingually and collaborated on a series of physical theatre exercises as well as choreographing a joint anglo-french hip-hop dance performance designed to showcase the energy and talent of its young participants. Both groups spent a weekend working and rehearsing together and the project culminated with a public performance at the Rebel Music Xplicit (RMX) Recording Studios in Poissonnière. The young dancers from London also performed alongside professional French musicians and Parisian street performers, outside the famous Centre de Pompidou (Pompidou Centre), near the Marais and in the relaxed atmosphere of the Fête de la Musique, they explored the music and entertainment on the streets of Paris - 'The City of Light'.