BURLINGTON, Vt. - TelAve -- There are over 300 writing systems in the world—but few humans left who can read, write, and understand nearly ninety percent of them. On January 23, 2025, World Endangered Writing Day will raise awareness of the struggle to preserve and promote these writing systems. The free online conference kicks off at 8:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern time and will include these sessions:

Mangyan Ambahan: Wisdom for Our Filipino Soul
Presenter: Chiara Cox
Q&A: Tim Brookes
8 a.m. EST (U.S.)

Created by Chiara Cox in collaboration with the Mangyan Heritage Center, this film examines the significance of the Hanunuo script to Mangyan culture through the ambahan sung poetry.

Creating New Scripts for the World
10 a.m.
Interviewer: Philippa Steele
Guests: Juan Casco, Pule kaJanolintshi, and Gerry Leonidas

Philippa Steele of the VIEWS Project of Cambridge University explores the graphic anthropology involved in creating a new script that accurately represents both the sounds of a language and its cultural history, traditions and iconography.

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What is writing? What is art?
Noon

The Sign and Symbol Research Group, based at Warsaw University, includes many of the world's leading scholars in grapholinguistics. A live calligraphy performance by Barbara Galińska to music by Kamila Owsianko will accompany a discussion with Daniel Takacs, Aleksandra Twardokęs, Agnieszka Hamann, Aleksandra Wąsowicz-Peinado, and Olgierd Uziembło.

Interowriting
2 p.m.
Interviewer: Tim Brookes
Guest: Alice Mazzilli

Trained in Italy and England as a calligrapher, Alice Mazzilli has become one of Europe's most interesting graffiti artists, bending and breaking traditional conventions of both forms to interrogate writing itself.

Wikichange
3 p.m.
Speaker: Satdeep Gill

The Wikimedia Foundation has been creating online opportunities for minority communities to introduce and represent themselves in their own languages and even scripts. Satdeep Gill explains their progress.

Font for Every Script
3:30 p.m.
Speaker: Dave Crossland

Google Fonts team leader Dave Crossland discusses the unique challenges involved in digitizing scripts that may never have been printed and considers next steps in addressing the digital divide between "digitally advantaged" and "digitally disadvantaged" communities.

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Script Encoding: The Future
4:30 p.m.
Speaker: Anushah Hossain

Anushah Hossain recently took over the helm at the Script Encoding Initiative. Where does SEI stand now, and what new directions is it considering?

The Desert Script
5:30 p.m.
Speaker: Jamal Benhamou

The Amazigh people inhabited North Africa from the Canary Islands to the western borders of Egypt 2,000 years ago. They've been invaded and marginalized by the Romans, the Arabs and the French. In the last 50 years, though, a series of difficult and often bloody developments have led to a growing acceptance of and respect for the Amazigh and their ancient script, Tifinagh.

Visit https://www.endangeredwriting.world/events to register.