Story Swap - Using Film and Drama for intercultural communicationA 7 day residential training course for youth workers, youth activists, community film and theatre practitioners and teachers held at the Lyric, Hammersmith.This is an experiential course in using theatre and film with young people to faciliate intercultural communication. "Story Swap" is based on sharing stories about your community with people from a different community. You then take it in turns to create a film or drama piece to share that other groups' story - this fosters an understanding of issues that are important to the other group, and also teaches us to be aware about the importance that we place on our own stories - how does it feel when someone else tells our story? The course will also include training on how to work with groups to "process" the experience, and to lead discussions about differences and similarities. Creating the Stories is just the first step, the intercultural learning comes from what happens next, and must be handled sensitively.The Course will be delivered using drama, films & active techniques, and participants will learn how to make useful tools for delivering this work using everyday items (eg making masks using paper plates and elastic, rather than shop bought masks at £20 each, or making films using mobile phones and tablets rather than high end film equipment)The course will upskill youth workers from across Europe, making them more able to engage and work with young people around issues of intercultural communication, community cohesion & discrimination, as well as developing a pan-European group of youth workers who are primed to develop work together in the future.There will be 30 participants from 8 partner organisations in 6 countries from across Europe including new and older EU member states as well as accession countries.Participants will create their own films as part of the process, and the course will culminate in a public presentation of these films with a Q&A session. We will create a network of practitioners and as part of the project will plan future cooperations.The longer term benefits will be an upskilled workforce using new and innovative techniques with their groups, who will be encouraged to develop mobility projects with other groups of young people across Europe.