Groote Eylandt Workshop Oct 2019
The end of October 2019 saw all of Living Languages’ trainers on islands off the coast of Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. Andrew and Amy travelled once again to visit the Groote Eylandt Language Centre for a jam-packed week of language work. On Monday and Tuesday we worked from the Umbakumba language centre, working on games and activities to teach non-Anindilyakwa adults living on the island some basic Anindilyakwa language. We also did some big picture project planning with the Umbakumba and Angurugu language teams, and talked about how to plan projects and resource creation activities.
On Wednesday and Thursday everyone came to Angurugu language centre and the group discussed ways they’d like to increase Anindilyakwa literacy on the island. We then looked at lots of different types of childrens books and spoke about the types of books that Anindilyakwa kids should have access to to learn to read and write, before everyone got stuck into writing their own stories in Anindilyakwa. We can’t wait to see how these develop into story books with pictures from the incredible artists in the room next time we visit!
We were all exhausted after such a busy and productive week, but it was so great to see some of the amazing work all the language workers, teachers and radio staff are doing to keep language strong on the island. Eningaba!
