Tag: writing

Come in 2025, your time is up!

Come in 2025, your time is up!

In the final days of 2025, here’s what we’ve learned this year about arts, business and culture.

Via Cultura — Lessons from Krefeld is distilled from a real cross-border cultural exchange process in Krefeld, Germany. It sets out seven practical observations about reciprocity, co-creation, power, pace, and emotional safety in international cultural work, drawn from lived experience rather than theory. It’s shared here simply as a record of what was learned, in case it’s useful to others working in similar terrain. This summary draws on the reflections of young people who took part in the cultural exchange visit to Krefeld, Germany, in partnership with Werkhaus (October 2025). It highlights the key themes of their experience and what made this trip distinctive compared to traditional school or tourist experiences.

1. Authentic Cultural Exchange and Human Connection

The young people valued genuine friendships and human connections with their German peers from Werkhaus. They experienced mutual curiosity and collaboration rather than being passive visitors or spectators. This led to real intercultural understanding through informal conversations, shared meals, and creative activities.

“It felt more like a family holiday than a school trip.”

“We had a closer and more personal experience with the German people.”

2. Creative Expression and Shared Making

The trip centred around artistic collaboration, such as portrait painting and creative workshops, which provided a shared purpose beyond sightseeing. Participants built confidence, embraced experimentation, and recognised that creativity doesn’t require perfection.

“Not everything has to be perfect for the final product to look good.”

“I was surprised by my own talent and everyone else’s amazing creations.”

3. Emotional Growth, Empathy, and Trust

Participants described strong emotional support, trust, and openness between adults and young people. The adults were approachable, caring, and flexible, fostering emotional safety and a sense of belonging that encouraged personal growth.

“I liked that I had more casual and friendly relationships with the adults.”

“They gave me space to calm down and collect myself when I felt overwhelmed.”

4. Autonomy, Freedom, and Shared Responsibility

Young people valued the balance of structure and freedom, being encouraged but not forced to participate. They appreciated autonomy and self-direction—an experience that built confidence and responsibility.

“I liked that I wasn’t forced to do anything I didn’t like but encouraged to do things I wasn’t sure about.”

5. Cross-Cultural Learning and Discovery

Language differences, food, and daily routines became opportunities for humour, learning, and connection. The participants discovered shared humanity, breaking down preconceptions about cultural barriers.

“The fact that the German students actually speak fairly good English.”

“How friendly the Germans were — I instantly connected with them.”

6. Self-Discovery and Personal Growth

Many participants reflected on personal development—overcoming nerves, social anxiety, and perfectionism. The experience encouraged authenticity, resilience, and humour in facing challenges.

“Be yourself — people will like your authenticity.”

“I don’t have to be perky all the time.”

7. Why It’s Different from School Trips or Tourism

Unlike traditional school or tourist trips, the Krefeld exchange focused on relationships and co-creation rather than observation. It blurred the boundaries between leaders and learners, offering a relaxed, empowering, and family-like atmosphere.

“On school trips it’s usually more of a lecture type thing, whereas on this trip we made friends and had individual conversations.”

“It’s a lot more relaxed — more like a family holiday than a school trip.”

Summary Insight

This cultural exchange offered reciprocal, co-created learning – a model of cultural participation rather than cultural consumption. It allowed young people to grow as artists, citizens, and individuals through shared humanity, empathy, and creativity.

Listen hard, listen long and don’t forget to waggle your ears: It’s World Listening Day!

It’s another “World of…Something” day today, and today’s celebration is for the skill of  listening.  Hardly a day goes by these days without it turning into a day to celebrate some human micro-activity or another.  Many of these activities are focused around very small neuro-muscular complexes and are intended to produce specific movements by those complexes, presumably for the benefit of the individual concerned and the human race as a whole.  Today’s celebration is the combination of little bones, muscles and nerves which permit the act of listening.

In education recently, we’ve seen this tendency to glorify minor muscular movements in lots of different manifestations: we promote the acts of writing, singing and reading for example in stealth-like attempts to exercise and strengthen the neuro-muscular arrangements that constitute the fingers, the vocal cords and the ocular muscle systems.

This increasing focus on micro-regions of the human body has naturally generated educational initiatives and consequently businesses which promote those differentiated, atomised and fractured human activities. We already have many organisations which focus on the actions of writing, of reading and of talking: and today no doubt there are businesses committed to building the neuromuscular assemblages which will improve our ability to listen.

Whether we are able to express ourselves any better, comprehend what previous generations are telling us, or hear what someone is trying to tell us is a moot point: but this fracturing of the human body into profit centres can only be good for the economy as a whole.   Whilst some faint hearts might be questioning whether or not fracking our planet might be good news for the environment as a whole, the good news is that the fracturing of the human body into profit centres can only be good for the economy – and with the minimum of disruption to the Blackpool pleasure beaches to boot.