photo credit: Silent words that bounce around the mind bumping into organs, synthesisers, guitar chords, breaths-breathing, montenegrofisher 2024
https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/event/voiced-the-festival-for-endangered-languages
The inaugural Voiced: The Festival for Endangered Languages takes over London’s Barbican Centre in October 2025, highlighting endangered global and local languages through a creative festival. The Barbican, London will be filled with an explosion of voices and works highlighting some of the world’s most endangered languages and dialects, with new commissions and work by new voices from around the world.
With some languages close to desolation, Voiced will also be a joyous, celebration showing how they are being saved.
Through poetry, music, visual art, performance, talks and live events including workshops and free spaces, the festival brings together living and ancient languages, dialects and scripts with a remarkable line-up of global artists; brilliantly highlighting the vast creative impact art has on language and language has on art.
The festival is co-curated by artist Sam Winston and poet Chris McCabe, “Having worked individually on endangered language projects from establishing the Endangered Poetry Project (National Poetry Library) to writing the picture book One and Everything and editing Poems from the Edge of Extinction, we asked each other why there wasn't a creative festival for unheard languages in the UK? So, we made Voiced happen! The first UK festival to showcase the incredible creative work of poets, writers, visual and sound artists and musicians who draw power from their indigenous languages to move, surprise and excite audiences throughout our islands and beyond. This festival brings these essential voices together for a ten-day explosion of creative multilingualism across London’s Barbican Centre”.
Voiced promises to introduce audiences to new ways of thinking about and engaging with language, with a set of five new poetry commissions about what ‘home’ means at its heart. London-based Filipino poet Troy Cabida, the National Poet of Wales Hanan Issa, Canadian Inuktitut writer Norma Dunning, Belarusian poet Hanna Komar and Amajagh poet and painter Hawad, who writes in the Tamajaght language, have each created new works in their personal endangered and minority languages, showing how both landscape and language diversity is under tremendous pressure to survive.
FREE HIGHLIGHTS (Level G foyer) Wednesday 1 October - Friday 31 October 2025 include:
- The Creative Voice Hub – this immersive area will be at the Barbican throughout October, featuring the new poems. The poets’ own words and stories alongside audio and visual designs showing how the decline of biodiversity is intimately linked with language. Also, various Participation Spaces.
- Five Giant Seed Syllable Flags – created by Sam Winston from endangered and minority languages with inks handmade by Winston mixing ingredients and materials connected to the poets’ native landscapes showing the bold and strong colours born out of their native landscapes:
- Troy Cabida Word:(smoke) ingredients Marlboro cigarettes, in reference to his memories of buying cigarettes for his parents as a child growing up in the Philippines.
Script: Baybayin Language: Tagalog
Norma Dunning Word: ᑕᖃ (veins) ingredients wild blueberries.
Script Canadian Sylabics Language: Inuktitut (translation in Pang dialect), Québec, Canada.
Hanna Komar Word: повязь (continuity, continuous connection between things) ingredients = chokeberries grown and collected in Belarus symbolising protests and state violence.
Script Cyrillic
Hawad Word: ⵜⵣⵎⵘⵜ ⵣⵏⵉ (blood ochre) ingredients = red ochre, symbolising his nomad childhood in the Aïr region of Niger.
Script Tifinagh Language: Tamajaght
Hanan Issa Word: شلونچ؟ (how are you?) ingredients kohl - the charcoal substance used to line eyes
Language: Arablish
- The Audio Trail - perfect for all, including families, to follow hidden languages using a map which takes listeners through the hidden quiet spaces of the Barbican, London to discover a sonic experience and audio treasure trove of ‘in the field’ recordings from sound artist Jamie Perera, using never before heard recordings.
- The Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) - discover a unique digital repository preserving multimedia collections of endangered languages from all over the world spoken and sung making them available for future generations, with some languages already lost in the living world. Curated by director of the Endangered Languages Archive Mandana Seyfeddinipur.
WORKSHOPS on Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 October in the Fountain Room, Level G
There will be a series of WORKSHOPS which will be full of creativity and finding exciting ways of visualising and hearing endangered languages including:
- Seed Syllables / An Alphabet for Home with Sam Winston - Saturday 11 October, 11am-1pm
With artist and co-curator of Voiced, Sam Winston, participants will explore the theme of home through drawing, writing, and colour-making exercises.
- Macaronic Poetry with Chris McCabe – Saturday 11 October, 1.30pm-3.30pm
A form of poetry that uses more than one language and is everywhere in literature, from the seven languages of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land to the polyphonic river song of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Led by poet and co-curator of Voiced, Chris McCabe, it’s time to explode the parameters of your poems. Bring a poem of your own or find text at the workshop and end up with your own multilingual piece.
- Translation Circle with Shamim Azad and Mike Raggett – Saturday 11 October, 4pm-6pm
A poetry translation workshop (conducted in English), fostering a sense of community and cultural exchange through the power of poetry. Translation Circle provides an exciting and enriching opportunity for those interested in poetry, language, and culture to come together and share their experiences and perspectives. Led by poet Shamim Azad and translator Mike Raggett (BBPC).
- Swirl of Words with Stephen Watts - Sunday 12 October, 11am-1pm
A workshop celebrating the multiple languages spoken in London. In 2021 poet Stephen Watts edited Swirl of Words / Swirl of Worlds, gathering over 100 poems in 94 languages spoken across Hackney. Take part in a shared immersion in key poems from the anthology. Perhaps you speak one of the 94 languages in the book or want to bring other poems of your own from the wider language body to share.
- Create Your Own Alphabet with Tim Brookes – Sunday 12 October, 1.30pm-3.30pm
The way language has left its mark in the world is truly unique, with the letterforms that have created a global picture of language with over 300 scripts, alphabets, abjads, and abugidas in the world - get creative and design your own writing system, following just a few simple rules that Tim Brookes will explain. Bring paper, pencil, markers, tablet - whatever you like to write on.
Works created during the Voiced workshops will go on display around The Creative Voice Hub – and workshop participants will be welcomed to join and perform in the Open Mix Closing Event of the Festival in The Pit on Saturday 18 October, 7.15pm - let your voice and creativity be part of Voiced.
LIVE PERFORMANCE & PANEL DISCUSSIONS from Thursday 16 – Saturday 18 October in The Pit
LIVE PERFORMANCE and PANEL DISCUSSIONS in The Pit, the Barbican’s award-winning space for experimental new performance from Thursday 16 – Saturday 18 October with top artists performing and discussing languages close to desolation with a joyous, celebration of how they are being saved.
- Opening Event - Thursday 16 October, 7.15pm-8.15pm
Voiced, the UK’s first creative festival celebrating the vast impact art has on language and language has on art. Hear from curators Chris McCabe and Sam Winston, along with special guest Raymond Antrobus whose poetry has won the Ted Hughes Award, the Somerset Maugham Awards and Rathbone Folio Prize - his poems will be simultaneously performed live in British Sign Language.
- The Art of Language: Panel Discussion - Thursday 16 October, 8.30pm-9.30pm
Half of the world’s languages are threatened to fall silent by the end of the century. Join speakers and artists of these languages who are activating new audiences with their work. What is the link between the words we use and the landscape we live in? How do indigenous speakers see the future of their languages? Speakers include Director of the Endangered Languages Archive, Mandana Seyfeddinipur; author of An Atlas of Endangered Alphabets Tim Brookes, and award-winning poet Raymond Antrobus. Hosted by Bidisha.
- Global Poems from Home - Friday 17th October, 7.15pm-8.15pm
The five newly commissioned poems exploring what home means around the world and how language shapes our relationship with place, performed live in their original endangered languages and an English version with poets Troy Cabida, Hanan Issa, and Hanna Komar, followed by an in conversation.
- Without an Army and a Navy Dialect Poetry - Friday 17 October, 8.30pm-9.30pm
A live extravaganza of dialect poetry including Forward Prize-winning poet Liz Berry (Black Country), Scouse from Chris McCabe, and poems in Sylheti from the winner of a Bangladesh national literary award, Bangladeshi British bilingual poet Shamim Azad.
- Yiddish Poetry of the East End - Saturday 18 October, 3pm-4pm
The East End of London contains more than 90 languages including the once widely spoken Jewish minority language of Yiddish. Performance and conversation from author Rachel Lichtenstein and poet Stephen Watts; exploring the hidden life and work of the legendary East End Yiddish poet, A.N. Stencl (1897-1983).
- Say Again: The Poetry of Invented Languages – Saturday 18 October 4.15pm-5.15pm
Today’s poets who go beyond the confines of their mother tongues to create poems in languages that communicate before they are understood. Poet Stephen Watts presents poems with echoes of Gaelic/Italian, and artists montenegrofisher present a soundscape poetry performance. Also, performance poetry in Polari, a UK language invented amongst the queer subculture as a form of resistance and which is now experiencing a renewed interest amongst today’s LGBTQI+ communities.
- Language as a Political Act - Saturday 18 October, 6pm-7pm
With passionate vocal performances including Palestinian poet Batool Abu Akleen and her translator Cristina Vita reading works in their mother tongue and discussing how their language provides a home as well as offering a form of resistance. Batool started writing at the age of ten, and at fifteen won the Barjeel Poetry Prize for It Wasn’t Me Who Stole the Cloud.
- Open Mix Closing Event – Saturday 18 October, 7.15pm-9pm
Whether you took part in a workshop as part of Voiced or simply have a poem or work of your own to share, it’s time to bring this to a Barbican audience. Poems written in your mother tongue or a mix of languages or invented languages! Hear new work from speakers from the hundreds of languages spoken across the UK. To sign up to read, reserve a spot when booking your ticket.
The line up of global talent creating and performing at Voiced: The Festival for Endangered Languages includes: Liz Berry, Raymond Antrobus, Hanan Issa, Hanna Komar, British Bilingual Poetry Collective, Mandana Seyfeddinipur, Tim Brookes, Troy Cabida, Batool Abu Akleen, Hawad, Norma Dunning, Jamie Perera, Cristina Viti, Shamin Azad, Rachel Lichtenstein, montenegrofisher, Stephen Watts, Chris McCabe and Sam Winston – to name but a few with more names to be announced.
