Our Network

Networking across Europe

Since the founders of Cultures Interactive began testing youth culture workshops in the Czech Republic in 2006 and carried out the Challenge Hate Crime project on distancing work in Belfast and London, among other things, Cultures Interactive has been involved in European and international democracy promotion - with the aim of averting violent and authoritarian attitudes among young Europeans and promoting human rights action and democratic awareness across borders. From 2010 onwards, she played a key role in setting up the European Commission's Radicalization Awareness Network (RAN, renamed in 2024) - particularly in the management of the 'RAN Derad' section and the 'RAN Collection of Inspiring Practices'.

However, since it became clearer in the mid-2010s that the RAN was more of a top-down measure of the highest EU security authority and less of a genuine network of practitioners, Cultures Interactive began to concentrate its work in its own independent EU projects and civil society EU networks. This was accompanied by a critical reflection on the Europe-wide trend towards the officialization and securitization of educational work and psychosocial counselling in the course of the so-called prevention of Islamism, which has regrettably continued ever since.

The EU projects designed by Cultures Interactive include, for example, the EDNA project (2013/2014), which provided biographical-narrative testimonies and insights into intensive educational work with young radicalized people. The EU project WomEx (2013/2014) examined gender roles, particularly of girls and young women in violent or extremist scenes, and provided recommendations for action for democratic education work. European Fair Skills (2015-2017) facilitated a sustainable exchange of methods with neighboring countries in Eastern Europe; community-oriented approaches to preventive and democracy-promoting youth work were documented and, together with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, international training courses with young people and youth workers were implemented. These were also tested in Ukraine in 2020 with Together we can!

EXIT Europe (2018-2021) continued and deepened what Cultures Interactive had developed across Europe for the field of distancing work and secondary prevention during its many years of involvement in the RAN - and bundled the methodological quality standards. This was supported by the testing of youth-cultural and narrative-oriented methods of civil society resilience education in CHAMPIONs and BRaVE (both 2019-2021). They are currently being further developed in the 'Horizon Europe' project OppAttune through ethnographically framed applications of Narrative Dialogue Groups (discussion groups) in schools (until 2026).

The CEE Pevent Net, which was set up by Cultures Interactive and continues to exist as an independent Central and Eastern European network to strengthen civil society organizations and practitioners in youth and social work in dealing with group-focused enmity, represents an outstanding achievement of the European work.