Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan (or the Indian Institute of Art and Culture) is a local community group in Manchester, with the aim of preserving, promoting and propagating authentic Indian culture including dance, music, languages, yoga and meditation. It is attended by many members of Manchester’s immigrant communities with roots in many different parts of India.

To engage this group of people, a trio of researchers from the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB) able to communicate in English, Hindi and Tamil brought fun science activities to one of their Saturday class days. The activities were used to illustrate research done by the outreach volunteers in the areas of protein structural biology and metalloenzymes. The visit was well received with many adults and young people engaging and speaking to the researchers about their work and science in general.

This event was arranged as part of the Inspiring Language Communities initiative set up by the MIB and Multilingual Manchester to give bilingual parents and children the linguistic tools to discuss science and career/subject choices in their local communities. It also aims to lower the barrier to public engagement for non-native speakers of English who are researchers at the University of Manchester