Poetry Performance, the art of performing a self-written text to a public audience, empowers young people to stand and speak up for themselves and others. Often hardship and isolation from the 'norm' gives young people a story and a need for catharsis: there is no vocabulary for their experiences, so they must develop their own. Thus, the Mouthy Poets in Nottingham and #LoewenMaul in Braunschweig support young people to develop their personal, communication and professional skills and (intercultural) knowledge through the means of creative writing and performance as well as to enable them to produce and organise their own projects. This helps young people to identify who they are, to develop to who they want to be and to become who they never thought they were able to become through the support of both collectives. Creative independence and professional opportunities lead to employable, critical and engaged European citizens. The Mouthy Poets, founded and led by their artistic director Deborah Stevenson, is a non-formal collective of 15+ year-olds with diverse backgrounds, differing in ethnicity, vocational status, gender, nationality and ability. In September 2013, Anne Hartmann from the Staatstheater Braunschweig and Deborah Stevenson created #LoewenMaul as a counterpart of the Mouthy Poets. The participants of #LoewenMaul are 15 year-olds and above. They share a similar diversity as the Mouthy Poets. In both groups there are participants with fewer opportunities facing social and economic obstacles as well as disability. After two staff exchanges and one participant exchange since 2013, we want to sustain and intensify this relationship with the Mouthy Poets by enabling both groups to collaborate fully with each other and directly in depth. We see the exchange that took place in April 2015 as a preparatory activity for the future exchanges we would like to carry out. It was also a chance to ‘test the water’ to see if participants from both sides could and were interested in working together and this is definitely the case. In our project »Young Poetry across Borders - a European Encounter«, our main objectives are to open up possibilities of language and intercultural learning as well as widening the artistic scope and cultural awareness of the participants from both groups. We want to harness the personal and social development that comes via creative writing to empower the young Europeans and the staff to build a broader understanding of the European identity, of solidarity and tolerance, of intercultural dialogue and language awareness. From 24.10.-1.11.15 and in 17.-25.7.16, both groups will accomplish 2 Youth Exchanges between Germany and UK and the other way round. Each of them will last 7 days, excluding travel days. 20 Mouthy Poets will come to Braunschweig and 20 #LoewenMaul Poets will visit the Mouthy Poets in Nottingham. Both groups are invited to participate in and join a programme of different participatory activities, organised and curated by each group and their staff. Both exchanges will happen within a structured framework: at the premises of the Staatstheater Braunschweig and in Nottingham within Mouthy Poets’ Poetry Performance Festival »Say Sum Thin 11« at the Nottingham Playhouse. We believe that the skills and experiences gained through creative writing and mutual support will have the most impact when they are performing and speaking out loud together to a public audience. The non-formal and informal learning will happen through facilitating workshops and different exercises for creative writing, editing and feedback, debates, hosting an open-mic as well as producing and presenting a poetry performance showcase together on one stage. Within that, we deliver peer-to-peer-learning-activities which target at language learning through poetry and city-specific exploration tasks where they write new poetry about the cities. These activities will be facilitated both by participants and group leaders of both groups as well as by staff of the Staatstheater Braunschweig. The working methods used for both activities are: facilitating workshops, exercises and masterclasses in creative writing and performing; shadowing; formats of discussion (panel discussions, one-to-one-mentoring, peer-to-peer discussions); rehearsing; sharing creative feedback; filming as a means of evaluation; dancing; cooking together, reading local poetry; watching Eurovision Song contests and/or soccer games; intercultural city tours and other non-formal and informal activities. Beyond that, we want to acknowledge and validate the participants’ commitment in the youth exchange and project, among others, in applying the Youthpass certificate. With our education and training through creative writing we want to provide all participating young Europeans with the necessary skills to shape and improve their possibilities for their future vocational education and career with confidence, pleasure and engagement.