A new culture centre devoted to languages and communication

In 2014, the permanent headquarters of Linguamón - House of Languages will be located in the Poblenou area in Barcelona, and more specifically in the up-and-coming 22@ district, a hotbed of businesses working in the fields of technological innovation, communication, power and biomedical research.

Currently undergoing intensive urban regeneration and transformation, the part of Barcelona in question is set to become one of the Mediterranean region's foremost hives of activity and development as a result of the creation of a new network of culture centres and its high proportion of companies and research centres.

The House of Languages will be based in the buildings on the site of Can Ricart, a former factory that was among the first in Catalonia to mechanically print cotton fabrics and which has now become a symbol of Barcelona's industrial past.

The House of Languages will be a new, unique culture centre focused on the promotion, use and development of languages. It will organise cultural activities with universal appeal, and generate knowledge and cutting-edge services for a wide range of professionals, among whom there is an ever-greater demand for specialised training on managing an increasingly multilingual and diverse society.

A complex of 7,000 m² devoted to languages in the heart of a major concentration of knowledge society establishments, the House of Languages will be a new cultural driving force with links to language communities, bodies that work to nurture multilingualism and promote the values of linguistic diversity, the general public and specialists alike.

Its location in the 22@ district bolsters the House of Languages’ credentials as a hub of innovation in the field of new technologies applied to languages.

Cultural project

The major changes brought about by globalisation have highlighted the importance of languages and the role that they play in terms of culture, dialogue and peaceful coexistence, social cohesion, the economy and the development of peoples.
 

The loss of the planet's linguistic heritage and a steady rise in multilingualism in societies have generated great interest in languages in recent times, not only among professionals and experts, but also among the general public. International bodies and institutions and governments all over the world have thus started up new language-related programmes in response to new requirements and significantly heightened sensitivity with regard to issues such as the sustainability of the planet's linguistic diversity, the preservation of linguistic heritage and the management of increasingly diverse societies. The European Union established the Office of the Commissioner for Multilingualism in 2005, for example, and the United Nations proclaimed 2008 to be the International Year of Languages.

What will the House of Languages have to offer?

Linguamón - House of Languages will be a centre devoted to languages and managing multilingualism. Its cultural output and day-to-day activity will be focused on three major areas:

Cultural dissemination, based on ideas and initiatives geared to showing the value and wealth of a linguistically diverse world:

• Exhibitions
• Educational and fun activities
• Production and circulation of audiovisual material

Providing specialised services by means of establishing initiatives and programmes for managing multilingualism. A number of services of the kind in question are already up and running, including Linguamón Best Practices, the Linguamón-UOC Chair in Multilingualism, Linguamón Mediterranean, Linguamón Organisations and Enterprise and the Linguamón Observatory.

Establishing networks for collaborating and cooperating with centres and organisations from all over the planet which work to disseminate the principles of linguistic diversity and multilingualism, as well as with all the major international bodies.

De l'ONU al 22@ - Supplement (in Catalan) from the newspaper El Periódico