INTERCULTURAL TRAINING

Drawing on our years’ of experience in research and training for intercultural learning and communication, our approach is to explore collaboratively unique and cost-effective ways of learning to perform in intercultural encounters and situations. We listen to our clients, understand their talents, and create activities and routes for investigating culture on new and non-essentialist lines. We work with students, youth activists, people in non-governmental organisations, educators, international assignees, business people, and develop programmes to fit their specific needs.

In practice: Gaining voice and ownership

The leader of a project group has a tough time trying to sort out the clashes between the members of her team. They come from diverse professional backgrounds and are versed in a range of different creative pursuits. Although they have all agreed on the goal of the project – developing a local cultural centre to serve as a creative laboratory for the region – they mutter and fight over the way the project activities evolve.

The team leader approached us for assistance. Her best hope was that the team members would manage to cooperate and create a shared path towards the goal of the project. Following two one-day workshops within a month of each other and with everybody involved, the results were that the team members agreed to go on together, stepping beyond the cultural lines of their varied professional backgrounds and began contributing positively to the creation of a new, commonly shared cultural environment of the project. Practices of negative stereotyping were discontinued and everybody gained voice and ownership of the project.