Our project "Bridges and Borders" aims to strengthen young Europeans' intercultural competences and appreciation of diversity, as well as promote cross-border mobility. We will invite about 40 youths between the ages of 16 and 22 from Turkey, Norway, Italy, Bulgaria, and Germany, including youngsters with fewer opportunities, to an eight-day participatory international youth exchange at wannseeFORUM, Berlin. Participants will be involved in the conception and organisation of the project at all stages. They will deal, on the one hand, with the topic of borders, which is equally political, social, and cultural in its nature and is one of the most pressing current European issues: How do borders work? Why do we need them (or do we need them at all)? Why do people want or need to cross them? At the same time participants will explore the nature of bridges as the other side of the coin: What connects us? How can we build bridges to overcome borders and segregation, on the maps as well as in the hearts and minds of Europeans?In artistic workshops, which will form the core element of the exchange, participants will explore different views and perspectives on the topic, share ideas, develop plans of action or utopias. Their individual approaches to the topic will be transformed into highly original artistic projects, which will be performed and presented to the public at the end of the exchange, both in a circus tent in the centre of Berlin as well as in the partner countries. Throughout the project participants will gain key intercultural competences by experiencing a most diverse group of youngsters from different national, cultural, social, and religious backgrounds. By actually crossing borders themselves participants - some of whom have never left their region, let alone country before - will experience the appeal of European mobility and will act as bridges between nations, cultures, and religions. We expect this project to have a profound and strengthening impact on the youths' lives. It will increase their appreciation of diversity and, thus, encourage them to act as promoters of European cross-border understanding and mobility back in their home communities.