At Home I Speak

Over 300 languages are spoken by London’s children, yet language learning in schools is in decline, and the new Prime Minister is concerned that ‘English is not spoken by some people as their first language’.

Following an arts residency at Gearies Primary School in Redbridge, where the students speak over 45 languages, playwright Neela Doležalová and composer Richard Melkonian have created a new play that explores multilingualism in contemporary Britain.

Based on recordings with students, teachers and families, At Home I Speak will provoke, entertain and enchant. It will explore how the languages we speak shape our sense of community, culture and identity. What does it feel like to grow up in a multilingual environment when English fluency is increasingly equated with the right to belong? Does it matter what language we dream in?

Part of the Being Human festival of the humanities 14-23 November.