Newcastle University

There was a great turnout for the ROMtels room opening/Roma day celebration on 12th April 2016. 42 parents and 7 children came, as a mix of Roma families from Slovakia and Romania.

After brief introductions, Marta and Laco (the parents who translated Enquiry 1 Great Fire of Tyneside and Enquiry 2 Ancient Mesopotamia) spoke about their experiences of undertaking this work. Community Workers Zaneta and Adina did an amazing job of translating everything (English, Czech which has significant overlap with Slovak, and Romanian).

We listened to a live performance by the Roma band from Excelsior Academy (a local secondary school), who were fantastic. Some of the band members were former Westgate Hill Primary School pupils. Small groups of parents then came up to the ROMtels room to experience the space for themselves.

It was really rewarding to see our project receive such a warm and positive response from these parents and also from teachers and other staff in the school. Having experienced the space in action, parents were then happy to discuss consent for their children to participate in the project. Zaneta and Anila prepared versions of our consent form in Czech and in Romanian, which was essential in ensuring that the parents could give their informed consent.