Image credit: Suzi Corker

In 2013 and 2014, English PEN brought together prominent translators, free speech campaigners and young refugees and asylum seekers for Brave New Voices, a project funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation that championed creative translation.

Now, thanks to funding from John Lyon’s Charity, the Limbourne Trust and AB Charitable Trust, English PEN is embarking on a three-year (2014-2017) project working with young refugees and asylum seekers living in Greater London. There are roughly 6500 languages spoken in the world, and over 300 languages are spoken in London schools. Brave New Voices 2.0 is a celebration of the multilingualism of many recently arrived young people, turning language barriers into creative bridges.

Eight runs of workshops will take place in every year of the project, led by one of the English PEN writer-facilitators. Each run of workshops will include a star session featuring a young adult fiction writer from outside the UK alongside their translator.

Every year, English PEN will publish an anthology of writing by the young refugees and asylum seekers who have taken part in the project that year. You can see examples of previous Readers and Writers publications here.