OUR LEARNING, TEACHING, TRAINING ACTIVITY IN KARLSHAMN: A MULTICULTURAL FESTIVAL

The building known as Lokstallarna used to be a workshop of locomotives and now it is a cool cultural centre and that was the place where the performances of the Multicultural Festival took place. Each country brought part of its culture to that festival.

The German students presented the life and work of the brothers Grimm and performed a choral reading of one of their tales: "The Frog Prince". They had divided the text so that at least one pupil from every country could read and interpret a part in his, or her, own language. A German student used English to join the whole story. It was a nice and original collaborative task.

The Italian students danced to the traditional music played in a video which featured places of interest in Sicily. They also played another video with famous monuments in Italy and “Volare”, by Domenico Modugno, as background music. They invited the audience to sing along with them.

Two Greek students read the poem “Ithaca” by Kostantinos Petrou Kavafis in Greek and in English.

The Spanish team prepared “Sevilla”, a song by Arturo Pareja-Obregón, with the piano, the guitar and a main voice and supporting voices. There was an introduction to the composer, the meaning of the song and why we had chosen it. A video was projected with photos taken in Seville and with the translation of the song lyrics into English.

The Portuguese were dressed with typical costumes and they surprised us with a vira, a traditional Portuguese dance. One of the girls in the team sang an emotional fado and one of the teachers, Mr José Manuel Vieira, played the guitar. The group also read the poem “Mar Português” by Fernando Pessoa and the verses in English were projected on a screen.

The Swedish students prepared two pop songs by Swedish singers: “Without you” by Avicii and “Blåmärkshårt” by Miriam Bryant. One was sung in English and the other in Swedish. A complete band made up of seven students and one teacher, Mr Linus Wissel, played the songs.

Several more concerts were performed by Swedish art students in the framework of a cultural week in Lokstallarna. We all enjoyed the musical activities enormously.