A Language Party is a fresh and intimate style of gathering that celebrates the sea of languages spoken in our cities, towns, and neighbourhoods. At any gathering, storytellers speak in their mother tongue before interpreting into the common language. Language Parties have been held in Australia, Asia, North America, Europe, and Africa.

Our vision is for a world enriched with oral cultures. We believe that in telling a story, the speaker offers it as a gift, and in having it heard they receive a gift in return. We believe that – no matter which language is spoken – when a story is told from the heart it can be understood by anyone who is listening with their heart. And we believe that in the telling and receiving of stories our lives are enriched by the world's oral cultures.

Storytellers include indigenous people, migrants, expats and refugees, each one a living conduit of a language that may be little known or rarely heard. By sharing their languages, storytellers forge new trust and connection. Our common life grows deeper in oral wisdom. From a new place of unity we heal divisions and find new courage to engage with our troubled world.

The host welcomes everyone and invites people to "listen-to-appreciate". This is language as art, music, spoken soul. Storytellers greet the audience in their mother tongue, and we respond in the language. Then storytellers share a story in the original language, with expression and dynamism that brings the story alive. They share stories learnt from their parents, stories from the land, stories of spirits and ancestors, of beasts and tricksters, of displacement and new beginnings, stories rich in wisdom about how to bring up children strong, stories about how to live well in a place. Stories are told by heart, from the heart, with no notes and no words projected on screens.

We listen with wide eyes like preschoolers at the feet of an animated teacher. Storytellers take a bow and then explain in the common language, and we discover how much we already understood, but there are surprises too. Their way of speaking the common language reminds us of others we know, and we become curious to engage with our linguistically-diverse neighbours and colleagues. At the end of the show, storytellers return to the stage and share the back-story, what it meant to share their languages like this. To close, we invite everyone to stand and perform a gesture of gratitude. We leave with hearts full to overflowing.

Putting on a language party is an act of creative facilitation. It begins with a production team who have lived experience of linguistic diversity and connections with local minoritised language groups. It continues with recruiting storytellers who exchange stories and discover commonalities in their rootedness in ancestral lands and their passion to pass on life-crucial knowledge to their children.

Through a series of gatherings we build community, and a safe space for sharing and interpreting stories, leading to clarity about the stories that the public audience should hear. Then we throw the Language Party, a one-off show, an unrepeatable moment in time when the storytellers summon their courage and take to the stage. Audiences are enthralled; the feast of languages fills them to overflowing.

Storytellers come away with new pride and strength, and in the following days we debrief, and the storytellers challenge themselves to think what else they could do to keep their language and culture vibrant in this place.

We would love to help you throw a Language Party. Please tell us about your interest using the form. We will line up a meeting with you, and share verbal and written guidelines covering every aspect of throwing a language party, including: recruiting and rehearsing storytellers; producing and emceeing; fund-raising and promotion; and finally, debriefing and discussing what storytellers can do next.

In return for our support, we will ask that you: follow our guidelines to minimise risks for storytellers and audiences; credit us at your event and incorporate the “language party” name and our logo; and tell us about your experience and share some images we can post here. Please note that we are self-supporting. We do not seek payment and we do not provide funding.

We began in Oakland, California in 2015, when Steven Bird, Robyn Perry and Manuel Maqueda established "Treasure Language Storytelling", now called Language Parties. Nadia Chaney joined us to emcee shows featuring native Americans and newly arrived immigrants who shared stories in the original languages. In 2016, Steven brought Language Parties to Australia and was joined by Kwame Selormey in 2017 and Jennifer Pinkerton in 2019.

The format gained attention internationally with our presentation at UNESCO in Paris, and our promotion of events across Australia during the International Year of Indigenous Languages in 2019, supported by the Aesop Foundation.

Today, Steven Bird and Nicole Curtin coordinate the program. We promote the format in the context of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022-32, and continue to investigate the social impact by interviewing participants.

Our work is supported by philanthropic funding at Charles Darwin University, where Steven is a professor specialising in language revitalisation, and where Nicole is a postdoctoral researcher having recently completed a PhD on Indigenous cultural tourism.