MELT Conference in Brussels

The MELT project is an initiative of the Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity (NLPD) where four language communities have been working in partnership with each other to produce and use a professional guide for practitioners dealing with young children multilingually as well as raising awareness amongst parents of the benefits of bilingualism and multilingualism. The language communities participating were the Breton language in Brittany, Frisian language in Fryslân, Swedish language in Finland and the Welsh language in Wales.

The conference will be held on Thursday 6 October, 2011 in Brussels. It will focus on the achieved results, outcomes and outputs from the MELT project, the successes, recommendations and the challenges for the future of Multilingual Early Language Transmission. In addition, a number of keynote speakers will present their perspective on, and experiences of supporting early language transmission in regional or minority language communities.

The conference is aimed at members of the MELT project, NPLD members, members of the European Parliament, members of the Council of Europe, researchers, experts, policy makers, practitioners and other interested parties to the conference.

The conference will provide opportunities for discussion, further research and future collaborations about these important matters.

This final conference is jointly organized by the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning, a department of the Fryske Akademy (Fryslân, the Netherlands), Folkhälsan (Swedish language community in Finland), The Welsh Language Board (Wales, UK), Divskouarn and the Regional Council of Brittany (Brittany, France).