Bridging Cultures: Digital Storytelling and Creative Connections for Community Empowerment

Partners: Intercultural Roots for Public Health (Coventry, England) and MakingCulture® e.V. (Coburg, Bayern)

Image © Intercultural Roots, EcoGPX Coventry Co-Creators

"We are excited to embark on this Cultural Bridge journey, exploring how participatory digital storytelling and community-led arts practices can forge meaningful connections between Coventry (UK) and Coburg (Germany). Through interdisciplinary collaboration, we will exchange expertise and co-develop innovative approaches that empower communities, amplify diverse voices, and redefine engagement with public space. This partnership enables us to bridge historical narratives, tackle contemporary social challenges, and lay the groundwork for sustainable cross-border cultural initiatives."

Intercultural Roots for Public Health and MakingCulture® e.V.

About the partners

Intercultural Roots (IR) is a UK-based not-for-profit organisation dedicated to furthering intercultural arts, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. Since its founding in 2018, IR has worked with over 800 practitioners across 50+ countries, co-creating innovative projects that empower underrepresented communities through participatory arts and embodied practices.

IR’s initiatives, such as EcoGPX Launchpad Coventry and the PLACES by EcoGPX® app, integrate storytelling, digital tools, and ecological awareness to connect people with place, heritage, and sustainability. The organisation actively cultivates creative expression among racially minoritised, LGBTIQAN+, disabled and other communities made disadvantaged, providing platforms for engagement and social impact.

IR collaborates with artists, researchers, and organisations to develop new approaches that address global challenges. Through Cultural Bridge, IR will deepen its international partnerships, enabling knowledge exchange with MakingCulture e.V. to explore digital storytelling, democratic participation, and intercultural dialogue between Coventry (UK) and Coburg (Germany).

MakingCulture® e.V. is an open experimentation platform inspiring innovative projects and networking in the cultural sector. Founded in 2016 in Coburg as part of a research project on experimental processes in design, it cultivates new participatory approaches to arts, sustainability, and civic engagement.

Its initiatives include projects on literature (Shakespeare, Dickens, Tucholsky, and persecuted authors of the 1933 book burnings), exile and memory (the international symposium Beyond Forgetting 1938/2018), and sustainability (Nights of Sustainability 2018-2019 and Sustainability Days 2022-2024). The organisation facilitates dialogue on democracy and heritage, engaging civil society in critical discourse.

In 2025, MakingCulture will complete the reconstruction of the world’s first four-wheeled electric car by Andreas Flocken, presenting it at major cultural and sustainability events. Through Cultural Bridge, the organisation will explore new formats for participatory engagement, including exchange with Intercultural Roots to develop innovative cultural and social impact practices.

Flocken Wagen 1888, Presentation of the vehicle under construction on the occasion of the Victoria & Albert Rally 2024 on the Coburg market square. Photographer: Liliana Frevel, Coburg