Norwich – City of Interculture celebrates the partnership between the UEA, its local host community, and communities beyond by bringing together representatives of all parties to share their perspectives on the challenges of communication across and between languages and cultures.

It is a programme of activities on the same theme run by the School of Language and Communication studies which began in Spring 2012 with a ‘Norwich – City of Interculture' interactive event at the Forum in Norwich.

More than 50 free events took place in the Forum over the two days of ‘Norwich, City of Interculture', including language taster sessions, public lectures, workshops, origami and a display of school artwork. Over 400 people attended the free event, with language taster sessions attracting over 250 people alone.

Organised by LCS, the aim of the event was to bring together and celebrate the diverse range of people living in Norwich now - a diversity the city has enjoyed for many centuries. Highlights on the first day included a talk from Norfolk dialect expert Peter Trudgill, and a workshop about the BBC's Spanish soap Eldorado, led by local script writer Lilie Ferrari. The following day, languages expert Dr Roger Baines (LCS) spoke about the use of slang across cultures, and Hazel Marsh (LCS) gave a talk about gypsies and their contribution to the 1960s folk revival.

Events across both days included an origami workshop and intercultural quiz. Meanwhile activities in the children's library included a giant word game, drawing and storytelling, and games from different countries. Students helped in running language taster sessions in Chinese, French, Japanese, Polish, Russian and Spanish, for all ages, which took place in the children's library.

Organiser and languages lecturer Ilse van der Velden (LCS) said: "We wanted to bring together people in Norwich to promote understanding about how different cultures influence the way people act, communicate and perceive the world around them."

Previous events in the series include Let's Talk (a roundtable event) and an interactive event (pdf 652 KB) at the Forum.