What has Interreg ever done for us? Hear from the next generation of Europeans

As the continent emerges from lockdown, questions about the future of Europe loom. Stories from the next generation of Europeans.

translate need translation with this page?
This dropdown can help you to translate automatically the website into other language. These translations are created automatically by Google so please note that they might not be accurate.

For the third edition of ‘This Is Europe’, Shahidha Bari journeys to the outer perimeters of the European Union – and beyond – in search of the stories that are shaping the future of life on the continent.

In a small village in rural Saxony, proximity to the Czech and Polish borders provides an excellent starting point for the most European of educations. Primary school teacher, Kamil Prisching, brings us along for a border-hopping school day, as his young German pupils travel to their partner school in the Czech Republic, and receive a crash course education on everything from the traditional practice of sheep-rearing to robotics – all in two languages, of course.

Meanwhile, on the border of Lithuania and Belarus, an imaginative new outreach project seeks to reclaim the infrastructure of ex-Soviet art schools, and make it available to the most vulnerable children in the region – with staggering results. Dalia Semeska is the artist, critic, and teacher behind a fairytale story of creativity, community, and adventure.

Dotted across the far corners of the Northern Periphery, an energetic network of young entrepreneurs are bucking trends of depopulation in their respective rural communities – and finding companionship in each others’ stories. Three of these renegade young business owners come together to revisit the Interreg program that helped them get started.

Subscribe here to get the latest about ‘This is Europe’ podcast.