Good practice

Introduction

The purpose of this section is to recognise and build on examples of good practice in intercultural dialogue, nationally and internationally, and share the findings of assessments to help improve efficiencies and drive good performance in the area of ICD.

In order to provide examples of good practice for the toolkit it was agreed that we would conduct research both in the UK and further afield. In excess of 40 projects were identified and a template created to capture details of the projects. These were identified through a range of sources including researching various iCoCo and other databases that exist.

iCoCo together with the Baring Foundation has established the Awards For Bridging Cultures. The intercultural dialogue awards have been running for two years. Many of the shortlisted projects are listed in the good practice database.

The British Council has also identified some of its own projects to capture good practice.

The template used captured details on the primary target groups, the theme, the method, the key objectives and the geographical coverage. The following types of objectives were identified:

Improving understanding (IU)
Encouraging Dialogue (ED)
Encouraging Interaction (EI)
Dispelling myths (DM)
Preventing extremism (PE)
Supporting conflict resolution/ post conflict (CRPC)
Reducing tensions (RT)
Increasing the ability of individuals/organisations to contribute to positive social change and the strengthening of civil society (IS)
Promoting the use of English as a tool for both international communication and intercultural understanding (PUE)

Summary analysis

The projects identified covered a range of themes, as can be seen in the case studies section. A number of these were meeting more than one theme. Inevitably most of these had cross-cutting threads with people acquiring new skills and knowledge and broadening their experiences and understandings of others.

The majority of projects identified worked directly with young people under 25. This is unsurprising given that the theme with the greatest number of projects is education and learning, followed by arts/culture, sports/leisure, and regeneration.

The majority of projects were inter-faith, inter-generational or inter-race. All wanted to improve understanding and increase levels of trust between each other and the different communities.

All of the projects had multiple objectives: in addition to improving understanding, many wanted to encourage dialogue and interaction, as an end in itself but also as a means of achieving other objectives, such as reducing tensions and dispelling myths.

Many of the projects were able to demonstrate the impact by capturing various outcomes and outputs, however very few had set a baseline and then carried out any formal evaluation. Some of the projects had made an attempt to do this:

And finally, most of the projects seem to be short to medium term projects that rely on a ‘cocktail’ of funding, which is an uphill struggle to keep securing. As funding is very limited most of the projects rely heavily on volunteer input.