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Desta Haile: Sing yourself up!

Have you ever learned a new language through song? Desta Haile speaks of the importance of music in her professional and personal development, and how singing and languages contribute to greater open-mindedness.

Singing Brussels

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Singing Brussels Live Streaming and Talks

Have you ever learned a new language through song? As a child, Desta Haile was not the best pupil. Yet music turned her into a brilliant polyglot, leading her to develop a teaching method using songs to make language learning fun and stimulating. In this lecture, titled Sing Yourself Up (in reference to an inspiring article by Gary Younge in The Guardian), the musician and language teacher speaks of the importance of music in her professional and personal development, and how singing and languages contribute to greater open-mindedness.

The talk will be livestreamed on this page on 2 June at 12:00. The video will remain available after the livestream.

Desta Haile is a British-Eritrean educator, writer and singer. She is the creative director of the Languages through Music programme, supported by BOZAR’s 2020 Afropolitan Forum in order to develop tools for learning African languages through music. She won the hybrid and collective writing competition To Speak Europe in Different Languages of the Babel festival of literature and translation. She also won the Afritondo Short Story Prize 2021, and holds an MA in Black British Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London.