The international youth exchange “The ROOTS & ROUTES Experience 2016: Culture, Diversity, Empowerment!” (RRXP16) will bring together 46 young people (including international group leaders) from Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, Italy, United Kingdom, France and Turkey; with artistic talent and previous experience in the performing arts or media and with diverse social / cultural backgrounds, including especially young people from families with migration/refugee background or belonging to minorities in their respective Countries of Residency.What moves young Europeans in 2016? What are their concerns for their own lives, for society and for the Europe, the world they want to live in? “The ROOTS & ROUTES Experience 2016” gives them a platform to showcase their concerns, wishes and ideas to a broad public, using performing arts and media as communication tools.The experience will begin with a advance preparation visit with two delegates per country in early summer 2016. There, in well-moderated group work a pool of themes concerning all participants will be developed. A connecting title will be found and a rough, open dramaturgical framework will be defined for the joint trans-disciplinary performance to be created at the exchange.Then, during a 17-day encounter phase in July/August 2016, all participants will fill with this framework with their own ideas and develop it to performance level, guided and coached by professional artistic trainers like artistic director Youngung Sebastian Kim a.k.a. Jaekwon and RRCGN’s educational team. The result will be performaned twice at Arkadaş Theatre – Bühne der Kulturen Cologne to an audience of 200+ people; a high quality recording with multiple cameras and audiotracks will be published on YouTube and will be shared through social media.RRXP aims and objectives include:– to discover, live and celebrate cultural diversity– to bring together young people from various European countries, to give them a chance to live and work together – and to learn from each other as well as from professional artists and coaches– to give room for intercultural learning, for exchange of views and cultural backgrounds, and for developing visions for the future, for Europe and the World– to empower young people to express their feelings and wishes and to articulate their ideas and demands by means of Urban Culture– to create a Urban Culture live show based on a framework developed at the APV: A basic script open enough to involve a wide range of ideas and topics brought up by the participants. The show shall involve the whole group and shall be performed live to the public at a Cologne theatre. A high quality recording of the show shall be published on Youtube and distributed via social media platforms such as Facebook– to help each participant to grow as a person, as an artist and as a citizen of Europe, to get a wider cultural horizon and to develop her or his talent, maybe even towards professionalism, thus facilitating social inclusion – to promote The ROOTS & ROUTES Experience 2016: Culture, Diversity, Empowerment!, the live show and the YOUTH IN ACTION programme to a wide public– to raise public awareness of the talent and motivation within urban youth, especially youth from migrant and minority backgroundsThe project will foster European networks and friendships on levels of organisations, youth workers and participants, and will create visibility for the multicultural urban European youth of today.