UNESCO International Mother Language Day (IMLD) 2025 takes place on 21 February, with an exciting programme of local celebrations announced by Manchester City of Literature and their partners.

This year will be the 9^th International Mother Language Day observed in Greater Manchester, a celebration of the cultural diversity and vast number of languages spoken across the city region.

Creative Manchester, one of the University’s research platforms, will offer a series of events to mark the occasion in collaboration with partners and colleagues. All events are free to book and all are welcome.

19 February 2025 – The power of language: Creating Manchester memories – Hear from researchers, poets and collaborators about how they came together in the aftermath of the pandemic to create a book capturing local communities’ experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic. This event will be held at Contact Theatre at 12:30pm.

21 February 2025 – Not all accents are created equal – A talk by the Linguistic Diversity Collective’s Dr Alex Baratta on accentism within British teacher training, held at Manchester Museum at 12pm.

21 February 2025 – Looking for languages – A language themed trail around Manchester Museum offering visitors of all ages a chance to learn about and celebrate languages and multilingualism. The trail is held in partnership with the Linguistic Diversity Collective and Manchester Museum and takes place from 1pm.

• To find out more about International Mother Language Day and the city’s celebrations, visit the Manchester City of Literature website.