Collaborating for Change

Collaborating for Change: Advocacy and Outreach for German at UK Universities

Many universities currently work with schools and colleges to promote German learning and to inspire the next generation of German students. From ‘taster’ workshops on German-language culture to longer-term creative programmes, German departments deliver a great range of successful and innovative outreach schemes. However, there is often little cooperation between institutions, and this can leave colleagues feeling like they have to ‘reinvent the wheel’ when launching new outreach initiatives. The ‘Collaborating for Change’ project seeks to reduce the unnecessary duplication of resources by sharing best practice in German outreach. By mapping and collating current German outreach activities across universities in the UK and Ireland, the project will enable closer cooperation between institutions and will help colleagues to share ideas and resources more easily.

Collaborating for Change is currently focusing on German but is intended as a multi-language initiative, on the understanding that good advocacy for one language raises the profile of all languages. Once we have established a model that works, we will seek to replicate it in other language communities.

Are you an academic in German Studies at a UK institution? Please fill out our survey!

Thanks to support from the German Embassy in London, we are now embarking on Phase 2 of the project. This will make these best-practice materials and templates available open-access. These materials will contribute to TLG's longer-term work supporting universities to develop sustainable partnerships with networks of local schools.

Collaborating for Change is a project of The Languages Gateway, in partnership with the Association for German Studies, University Council for Languages, British-German Association, Association for Language Learning, and Queen’s College Translation Exchange. It is led by Dr Charlotte Ryland. For more information please contact the project’s research assistant Liam Johnston-McCondach.

We are grateful for financial support from the Schroeder Fund at the University of Cambridge and from the German Embassy in London.

Collaborating for Change grew out of Making the Case for German, a national campaign led by the German Academic Exchange Service, the Goethe-Institut, and the German Embassy in the UK. It was particularly inspired by the campaign’s Leadership Symposium, which included a discussion group on outreach and advocacy.