Partner – The Sapieha Palce
Location – Vilnius
Since 2025
Together with the British Council Lithuania, the Sapieha Palace, a branch of the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, implemented the project “Language Bridging Culture” – a pioneering initiative aimed at making cultural education more inclusive and accessible to linguistic minority communities in Lithuania. The overall goal of this project was to make cultural education and museum visits more accessible to people from remote areas, linguistically diverse backgrounds, and migrant or refugee communities by developing inclusive programmes tailored to their needs.
Educational activities ranged from in–person sessions for schoolchildren and elderly adults as well as online and programmes that brought cultural content beyond the museum’s walls. Activities were designed for A2/B1 Lithuanian proficiency and delivered in simplified, plain language, enabling participants to engage without advanced language skills.
Moreover, the project offered a series of training seminars and consultations for over 40 educators from museums, galleries, and NGOs. With the support of plain language specialists from Vilnius University, participants explored methods for simplifying communication without compromising content quality - this culminated in the creation of practical plain language guidelines, which are now integrated into Sapieha Palace’s regular staff training and will be publicly accessible online.
The project not only enhanced the cultural sector’s linguistic inclusivity but also sparked stronger relationships between institutions and diverse communities. By equipping educators with new tools and creating a welcoming space for learners of varying language levels, “Language Bridging Culture” laid the foundation for more democratic, empathetic, and engaging cultural education practices in Lithuania.
During the project:
Over 170 participants (museum, gallery, cultural institution workers, community consultants, school students took part in the project activities
Project activities included educational activities of different formats (online, on-site, mobile, off-site workshops for different audiences and age groups (children, teens and students, and adults)
Project activities included 3 educator’s training workshops and 8 educational sessions for both children and elderly adults
Over half of the educators who participated in the project’s seminars and training sessions reported a significant improvement in their ability to communicate more effectively with visitors whose mother tongue is not Lithuanian