The Summer School of the Grobnik Dialect once again brings together the youngest guardians of the local word
From 24 to 28 August 2026, the Summer School of the Grobnik Dialect will be held at the Castle in Grad Grobnik, a five-day programme intended for primary-school-age children that combines learning the local idiom with play, creativity and socialising. Workshops will take place every day from 10 a.m. to 12 noon, while the programme will conclude with a performance on Saturday, 29 August, in the late afternoon. According to the organisers' announcement, the children will then present to their parents, family members and other visitors what they have learned and prepared during the week. Participation is free, but registration is mandatory, and parents are responsible for bringing the children to the Castle in Grad Grobnik. In this way, the programme combines practical familiarisation with the Grobnik dialect with the idea that linguistic heritage is best preserved when it is actively used and passed on to new generations.
The school is organised by the Chair of the Čakavski Sabor of Grobnišćina and the Croatian Studies Students' Club, with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia and the Municipality of Čavle. According to the published announcement, this year's programme will be led by Croatian Studies students Laura Lukanić and Matea Škalamera, who designed the activities so that the children will not merely be passive listeners. The emphasis is on learning through conversation, play, creative tasks and joint work, that is, on situations in which words and forms of the local dialect can be used immediately. Such an approach is particularly important in the case of intangible heritage, whose value is preserved not only through documentation but also through its actual use in the community. This is precisely why the final performance is not merely a ceremonial addition to the programme, but an opportunity to take what has been learned in the workshop and present it to families and the wider public.
Five days of learning through play and creativity
During the five days, participants will become acquainted with the distinctive features of the Grobnik dialect and the ways in which it can be used in everyday expression. In doing so, the organisers want to show that a local dialect is not merely a remnant of the past or a subject of specialist study, but a living form of communication that can also be interesting to children growing up in a completely different media and educational environment from the generations before them. Learning through play and creative activities makes it possible to connect linguistic features with concrete experience rather than merely with a list of words or grammatical rules. At the same time, such a programme opens up space for discussion about why different local dialects exist, how they change and what happens when younger speakers use them less and less frequently. The final performance on 29 August should demonstrate precisely this practical dimension of the school - a language that is spoken, passed on and shared with others.
In its guidelines on intangible cultural heritage, the Ministry of Culture and Media includes oral traditions, expressions and forms of speech among its domains, while it lists the transmission of knowledge, workshops, formal and informal education and the presentation of cultural assets within the community and to the public as important forms of safeguarding. Within this framework, the Summer School can be viewed as a concrete example of transmitting heritage to the generation that will decide whether individual local expressions will continue to be used in everyday life. In its safeguarding programmes, the Ministry places particular emphasis on cooperation between heritage bearers and professional, cultural and educational institutions, as well as on documenting and presenting intangible cultural assets. The Grobnik programme connects a cultural association with future Croatian-language professionals, local government and state cultural institutions. This gives the school a broader significance than that of a one-off summer workshop.
The Grobnik dialect as protected heritage
The Chair of the Čakavski Sabor of Grobnišćina states that the protection, preservation and promotion of the Grobnik dialect are among the fundamental objectives of its work. Over the decades, the association has linked this goal with publishing, academic conferences, musical and stage programmes, and work with children and young people. A particularly important place in documenting the idiom belongs to the book The Grobnik Dialect of the 20th Century - Grammar and Dictionary, written by Iva Lukežić and Sanja Zubčić and published by the Chair in 2007. The work systematically describes the linguistic system used by the inhabitants of Grobnišćina in the 20th century and includes both a grammatical description and lexical material. The Chair points out that many years of professional work on documenting the Grobnik Čakavian dialect played an important role in creating the basis for its protection as an intangible cultural asset of the Republic of Croatia.
Academic research also shows that the Grobnik dialect, like every living idiom, is changing. In their paper on linguistic changes in the Grobnik dialect, Sanja Zubčić and Darja Šupljika analysed changes at the phonological, morphological and syntactic levels by comparing a more contemporary corpus with the situation described for the 20th century. The authors emphasise that changes are particularly visible at the lexical level, which is the most open to influences and the introduction of new elements. Such findings provide additional context for programmes aimed at children: the goal of preservation does not mean freezing the dialect in a single historical form, but increasing the possibility that it will remain present in real communication. Workshops therefore make sense precisely as a place where documented linguistic material is returned to speakers and potential new speakers.
The Chair has connected the Castle and heritage for more than three decades
The Chair of the Čakavski Sabor of Grobnišćina was founded on 28 July 1992, and according to the Chair's own information, representatives of the University of Rijeka, the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Matica hrvatska, the Čakavski Sabor and the then local authorities participated in its establishment. Its headquarters are in the Grobnik Castle, which it has managed since April 1994 on the basis of an agreement with the Municipality of Čavle. Among its main activities, the Chair lists care for the Castle as protected tangible heritage, research into and promotion of Grobnik's cultural heritage and, in particular, the preservation of the Grobnik dialect. Over the decades, museum, gallery, publishing, musical and educational programmes have been developed in the Castle. The Summer School therefore fits into a broader model in which the same historical space serves both to preserve tangible heritage and to transmit intangible culture.
Work with young people is not a new element of this approach. On its website, the Chair records various projects in which children have participated in musical, stage and linguistic programmes, as well as competitions for pupils' literary works written in Čakavian dialects. In July 2026, the Castle also hosted the closing programme of the Guardians of Culture summer camp, which connected drama, dance, debate, the Glagolitic script and learning about cultural heritage for children. Such programmes demonstrate the continuity of the idea that heritage is passed on most successfully when it is presented to young people not merely as something that should be respected, but as material with which they can work, create and communicate. The Summer School of the Grobnik Dialect narrows this idea further to language while simultaneously connecting it with identity, family experience and local cultural memory.
The Castle as a classroom outside the traditional school
The venue gives the programme additional symbolism. The Čavle Tourist Board describes the Castle of Grad Grobnik as a historic fortress in a strategically important position above the Grobnik Field, whose currently visible sections mainly date from the period between the 15th and 17th centuries. Throughout history, the Castle had defensive and residential functions, while today it houses cultural and interpretative facilities, including a gallery, a local-history museum and the Along the Paths of the Frankopans Interpretation Centre. Throughout the year, the space is used for exhibitions, concerts, presentations, workshops and other events. In such a setting, a language workshop gains a direct connection with the place in which the same cultural identity was created and transmitted for centuries.
Grad Grobnik is situated on a hill above the Grobnik Field, in the hinterland of the northern Adriatic and near Rijeka. The historic Castle is one of the recognisable local cultural landmarks, and its present-day function goes beyond the traditional sightseeing of a historic building. For school participants, it becomes a temporary classroom in which the dialect can be connected with a concrete place, stories, place names and local history. For families coming to Grad Grobnik from other places because of the programme, practical information is therefore just as important as the cultural content: workshops begin at 10 a.m. and end at noon, and parents are responsible for bringing and collecting the children. Visitors planning a longer stay in the surrounding area because of the programme can view accommodation offers in the Grobnik area.
Why passing the dialect on to children matters
Protecting a dialect does not end with its inclusion in official registers, the publication of dictionaries or the recording of archival material. In its explanation of procedures for safeguarding intangible heritage, the Ministry of Culture and Media stresses that this heritage encompasses knowledge, performances, expressions, skills and practices that communities recognise as part of their own culture. This means that the bearer of heritage is first and foremost the community that uses and transmits it. If a particular dialect disappears from families, games, everyday conversations and public events, its documentation may remain exceptionally valuable for scholarship, but its function as a living means of communication is diminished. The importance of working with children rests precisely on this distinction between a documented language and one that is actively used.
In recent years, the Chair has also connected the preservation of the Grobnik Čakavian dialect with digitisation and the collection of toponymic material. In February 2026, the continuation of work on the Toponymic Atlas of Grobnišćina was presented, a project for collecting and describing traditional names of places, areas, fields, roads, springs and other localities. According to Ivo Bogović, head of the Chair's programme activities, as reported by Novi list, the aim of such projects is to record endangered vocabulary and preserve it for future generations and researchers. The Summer School operates at another but related level: instead of words merely being recorded, children encounter them in spoken situations and learn what they mean. Documentation and direct transmission thus become two parts of the same preservation strategy.
Free workshops with mandatory registration
The Summer School of the Grobnik Dialect will take place from Monday, 24 August, to Friday, 28 August 2026, every day from 10 a.m. to 12 noon at the Castle in Grad Grobnik. The programme is intended for primary-school-age children and participation is free of charge. Registration is mandatory, and the organisers have published two email addresses for registration: laura.lukanic@gmail.com and matea.skalamera@gmail.com. Parents are responsible for bringing the children to the Castle and collecting them after the workshops. The final performance will be held on Saturday, 29 August, in the late afternoon, while the exact time is not specified in the available announcement.
Summer School of the Grobnik Dialect
- 24-28 August 2026
- every day from 10:00 to 12:00
- Castle in Grad Grobnik
- for primary-school-age children
- participation is free, registration is mandatory
- final performance: 29 August 2026 in the late afternoon
- registration: laura.lukanic@gmail.com or matea.skalamera@gmail.com
The programme in Grad Grobnik therefore directly connects three levels of heritage preservation: professional documentation, the work of cultural institutions and the everyday learning of new generations. The Grobnik dialect has already been systematically described in academic and lexicographic works, and the Chair has included it in its cultural activities for decades. Nevertheless, the long-term sustainability of every local dialect depends on whether someone will continue to understand, speak and transmit it. Five days of summer workshops cannot by themselves resolve the issue of linguistic change, but they can give children direct contact with a dialect that belongs to the history of the place where they are growing up or with which they have family ties. It is precisely in this practical transmission, from a word in a dictionary to a word spoken in the Castle, that the central idea of this year's Summer School can be found.
Sources:
- Regionalni.hr - announcement of the 2026 Summer School of the Grobnik Dialect, dates, organisers, programme leaders, registration and final performance (link)
- Chair of the Čakavski Sabor of Grobnišćina - information on the preservation of the Grobnik dialect, publishing and cultural activities and the book The Grobnik Dialect of the 20th Century (link)
- Chair of the Čakavski Sabor of Grobnišćina - history of the Chair, its foundation, headquarters and activities in the Grobnik Castle (link)
- Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia - definition of intangible cultural heritage and the procedure for inclusion in the Register of Cultural Assets (link)
- Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia - guidelines for safeguarding, transmission, presentation and workshops related to intangible cultural assets (link)
- University of Rijeka, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences - information on the academic paper Linguistic Changes in the Grobnik Dialect by Sanja Zubčić and Darja Šupljika (link)
- Čavle Tourist Board, Grobnik - history of the Castle of Grad Grobnik and its present-day cultural function (link)
- Novi list - information on the Toponymic Atlas of Grobnišćina project and the digitisation of the Grobnik Čakavian dialect (link)