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The LUCIDE project, which TLC has been leading on, came to a close this September with a two-day conference hosted at the London School of Economics, looking at ‘The Future of the Multilingual City’.

The LUCIDE project (Languages in Urban Communities Integration and Diversity for Europe) has been looking at the impact of multilingualism in the urban environment and its implications for education, the economy, civil society and urban planning.

Speakers included Prof Joe Lo Bianco and Dr David Little from the LUCIDE project, and all the project partners led sessions or presented. Other speakers included Dr Suzi Hall from LSE, and Dr Paul Kerswill of the University of York.

In an ambitious programme, we covered the project’s main findings and publications including the new City Reports – due to be published soon – and the Tookits in a series of themes: the Cosmopolis; Landscapes; Identities; and Education.

We were joined by two groups of young people from London schools who shared their experiences of growing up as bilingual or multilingual children in the UK capital in work carried out by Dr Dina Mehmedbegovic at the Insitute of Education.

Nick Byrne, Director of the LSE Language Centre, who hosted the conference, also presented an interactive art project commissioned especially for the project, created by the artist and urbanist Tom Keeley, featuring an interactive map with two walks across London.  (Note: The two-walks website has now closed.)

The conference was attended by 200 people and was a fitting end to the project, sparking many discussions and questions for the future. Full details about the project can be found at www.urbanlanguages.eu