Owen Lewis is working on Sport Wales' next steps in bilingualism.

In its early stages, a Bilingual Country Development Programme, which supports the Welsh Government’s Cymraeg 2050 strategy, is being developed across the country. This is being done through a series of workshops with leaders across different organisations.

The results from these workshops are helping shape the decisions being made at Sport Wales on how to integrate the Welsh language more, in a way that's effective and sustainable.

We caught up with Owen to find out more...

What is the aim of the Bilingual Country Development Programme?

"The goal is to help senior leaders across Wales understand how they can create an environment in their organisations where bilingualism can thrive."

Tell us more about the purpose of the workshops.

"The workshops were designed to move the idea of 'building a bilingual culture' out of a box-ticking, or paperwork, setting and into something practical which can be used by everyone.

"Split into four different areas, the workshops focused on:

  • understanding people's context, and awareness of your influence as a leader
  • collaboration
  • embedding bilingualism into organisations in practical ways
  • advocacy and how to keep momentum going

"These all help encourage people to use the Welsh language in a 'psychologically safe environment', which I'll explain more later."

What was learnt from the workshops?

"They highlighted things which you may not expect. The main discoveries were:

"Leadership behaviour, not Welsh language fluency, is crucial. Progress is made when leaders actively embed bilingualism and allow for imperfect use of the Welsh language to help encourage people to participate. It needs to feel easy, continuous, rewarding and social.

"Empathy and 'psychological safety' underlines people’s confidence. Language is closely linked to identity and emotion, and when people realise they've made a mistake when they speak another language, it can knock their confidence hugely. Feeling safe to try and make mistakes without being judged is extremely important.

"Creating a culture depends on everyone, not individuals. Organisations must make sure all the reliance is not put on individual Welsh speakers. The work must be done by everyone at their own levels – this is what makes a culture."

What will Sport Wales do next?

"We're already working with people across Sport Wales to understand their ‘Welsh Language story’. You may have heard Matt Davies share his at the recent Shared Experiences session, and we'll be featuring others in Huddle's new Proffil yr Iaith Gymraeg insert. This is helping us map out how Welsh is used across the organisation.

"Following this, we'll work with the leadership team and others to work through what we discover. We can then map out the actions to embed a sustainable, organisation-wide culture of bilingualism at Sport Wales, using our understanding of System Thinking approaches to support how we do this."