The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney is offering a multicultural program to cater for non-English speaking communities.

The program, entitled Community Ambassadors, provides free tours of the history of the gallery and prominent works of art from the gallery’s collection of Australian, Aboriginal, Asian and European Art.

The tours are conducted by voluntary community ambassadors who are trained by the gallery in response to and recognition of the increasing interest in Australian art and culture from non-English speaking communities.

The Community Ambassadors are fluent in languages such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Japanese. The intention of the gallery is to constantly expand on the program, making further languages and tours available to the public.

(www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au)

The gallery considers this program plays an important ongoing role in the community, by way of going beyond language barriers and creating linguistic links which could assist the public to further expand their sensory and social experiences during their visit.

The Art Gallery is seeing rapidly increasing numbers of Asian visitors, in particular from China and Hong Kong.

Edmund Capon, director of the Art Gallery, said: “We have an extraordinarily diverse audience who visit the gallery, and recognize the need to broaden the experience for people not fluent in English. Through the tours and their links within the communities, the Community Ambassadors play a vital, ongoing role in developing and familiarizing even greater numbers of people to enjoy and appreciate our gallery.”