Global Partnerships

Cultural Youth Exchanges between North and South

By experiencing an encounter in countries of the Global South or the Global North and meeting their peers face to face, young people become more aware of global contexts. Exchanges based on artistic and creative activities are an effective way to explore development issues in an inspiring setting and contribute to global awareness – to a global citizenship – among young people.

This practical guide supports practitioners in organising cross-continental exchange projects with partners in the Global South or Global North respectively and in successfully linking cultural education, international youth work and global learning. The guiding questions are:

• How can we establish and practise fair partnerships between cultural education practitioners from North and South in the face of undeniably unfair global conditions and the persistent effects of post-colonial structures?
• How can we organise youth exchanges within the framework of these partnerships to enable young people to explore development issues in depth and to benefit from global education and informed transcultural experiences?

This practical guide is primarily aimed at full-time and voluntary cultural education practitioners and their colleagues working in closely related areas, such as international youth work and development education. We particularly want to reach out to practitioners who have only just begun to explore the potential of international and development-related youth work and provide them with the necessary basic knowledge. This guide is also useful for experienced professionals working at local, regional or national level who wish to broaden their understanding of individual aspects of international youth work and find out more about backgrounds, concepts and contexts.

This publication brings together findings from the BKJ project global youth.culture.exchange.