Aberlangs in a Box Initiative Overview
In collaboration with Research Assistant Andrada Lilburn, the project team has developed a suite of educational materials tailored for students at the end of primary education. These resources are directly linked to the Aberlangs: City of Languages initiative, which actively promotes language learning alongside home, heritage, and community languages of both Scottish and international origins.
Interdisciplinary Resource Development
Co-developed with academic colleagues across Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Ethnology, the resources develop for ‘Aberlangs in a Box’ encompass linguistic, cultural, and intercultural awareness. To maximise reach, these dedicated activities will be available through a newly launched project website as well as 50 physical resource boxes prepared for local primary schools, scheduled for distribution on the European Day of Languages in September 2027. An informal preview of the boxes was organised during the third “Future of French in Scotland” conference at the University of Aberdeen on 22 June 2026.
Core Classroom Activities
The materials feature a diverse range of exercises designed to engage students in both printed and digital formats. These include reflections on language structure and diversity, interactive vocabulary acquisition exercises via a “Spin the Wheel” game, and cultural discovery through a “Hello Hame” game. Additionally, a central creative component allows classes to document their own multilingualism using the Cartonera format—a hand-crafted book style emerging from grassroots publishing movements in Latin America.
The Cartonera Case Study
Schools will receive professionally printed physical copies of Andrada’s very own cartonera, alongside full access to the online versions of the resources. The creative cartonera, entitled ‘A Journey from the Carpathians to Aberlangs’, chronicles Andrada’s migratory and linguistic journey from Romania to Aberdeen across eight pages. Alongside personal cultural reflections, this book introduces the wider Aberlangs initiative and highlights Andrada’s work on the project, interviewing local multilingual individuals. To further enrich the classroom experience, short video clips and posters from these interviews are hosted on the project website for classes to explore. Prompts are also provided for class to produce their own cartoneras.
Project website: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/llmvc/research/aberlangs/
Fransiska Louwagie, Dawn Leslie, Nick Lebigre, Andrada Lilburn (Aberlangs – University of Aberdeen)
