Bienvenue to new French visitors' guide for students

Students visiting Plymouth from France can now tour the city using a new visitors’ guide to help make the most of their stay and work on their language skills.

An event celebrating the launch of the new YOLO (You Only Live Once) tourist information brochure for young people, is taking place on Wednesday 26 June at 3.30pm in the Tourist Information Office on the Barbican.

The brochure has been created by young people from four city schools: All Saints Church Academy Plymouth, Shakespeare Community Primary, Laira Green Primary and St. Edward's C.E. Primary. Pupils have worked with other young people from schools in Plymouth’s twinned city of Brest in France to create an eye-catching, young person-friendly guide for the city, which combines both English and French languages.

Production of the brochure is part of a Comenius Regio project, funded by the European Commission through the British Council, with schools in Brest on 'Citizenship and Entrepreneurial Education'. The visitors guide is one of the practical and real-life outcomes of the work, which is designed to help develop better knowledge and understanding among young people and education staff of the diversity of European cultures and languages, and the value of this diversity.

Councillor Nicky Williams, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, said: “This is such as fantastic brochure, which really helps bring Plymouth to life for visiting students. The current guide is in English and French but we hope to be able to produce it in other languages for other visitors, including Chinese. It just goes to show what fantastic achievements are possible when bright young things put their heads together.”

The launch event will feature presentations from the children about their work and exhibitions with drawings and information put forward for the brochure.

Special guests at the event will include: Leader of the Council, Councillor Tudor Evans, Councillor Nicky Williams, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, the Deputy Lord Mayor and representatives from the Plymouth Waterfront Partnership who sponsored the guide’s production.

Last year there were six visits by French students from Brest and other parts of France linked to city schools and this year there are set to be ten.