The Chinese Whispers™️ Project

The Chinese Whispers™️ is the Confucius Institute’s award-winning project (Higher Education Academy – Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence 2016).

Two Project Agenda

The agenda of the project is two fold: first, it is about interculturalism, that is developing awareness, competence and citizenship in the local community to facilitate respectful interaction between people from different cultural backgrounds.

Second, it is about creativity, that is promoting the learning of language and culture through creative practice, specifically singing.

Three Research Strands

The project involves three strands of research: educational, psychological, and creative. The educational strand involves designing and delivering a new resource for enabling Mandarin language learning in the project.

The psychological strand investigates people's social, emotional and educational experiences of learning Mandarin language and culture through singing.

The creative strand explores cultural translation and fusion via original compositions.

The Chinese Whispers™ Project Team

Dr Elaine King (Chair)

Dr Yanyi Lu (Project Leader)

Research Supervisors: Dr Elaine King, Dr Helen Prior, Dr Shane Lindsay, Dr Rowan Oliver

PhD Research Students: Eloise McCann, James Rushworth

The Chinese Whispers Concerts

The Chinese Whispers Concert is an annual event organised by the Confucius Institute and Music (School of the Arts) at the University of Hull. Held in the Middleton Hall, this concert brings together schoolchildren and community choirs to showcase innovative work in teaching Mandarin Chinese through choral singing.

This event is a unique opportunity for communities to come together and enjoy an evening of music, celebrating the beauty of the Chinese language and culture. In addition to highlighting the talents of participating artists, the concert serves as a platform for cultural exchange and mutual understanding.

Now in its nineth year, the project has achieved great success, fostering new approaches to language learning through music. This concert will feature performances demonstrating the impact of these initiatives within the University and the wider community.