ECHO: Migration Stories Along the Traces of the Past (KA152-YOU with double mobility)

This youth exchange is grounded in the idea that migration is a shared European experience whose cultural traces are still actively lived today. While the political structures that once shaped large-scale cultural circulation no longer exist, their imprints remain visible in everyday practices such as food, music, language, crafts, urban life and social traditions across Europe. The project focuses on these living traces rather than on historical narration or crisis-based approaches to migration.

Türkiye, as the coordinating country, provides a meaningful starting point for this exploration. It is a place where multiple cultural layers intersect in daily life and where long-term mobility has left tangible and observable marks. From this starting point, the project brings together young people from different European regions to reflect on how similar cultural continuities appear in their own local contexts and how these connections are still shaping contemporary European societies.

The partnership is intentionally built around countries where these shared cultural traces are particularly visible and socially relevant. Partners from Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia contribute perspectives from the Western Balkans, where multi-ethnic coexistence, cultural continuity and mobility remain part of everyday social reality. Hungary represents the Central European dimension, linking historical cultural circulation with current debates around migration and identity. Greece contributes a perspective shaped by long-standing cultural interaction, population movements and shared everyday practices across the Eastern Mediterranean. Italy brings the broader Mediterranean context into the project, where migration, trade and cultural exchange continue to influence social and artistic life. Spain, with its Andalusian heritage, represents the Western European dimension and highlights how cultural coexistence and circulation have shaped European culture far beyond one region.

The project uses arts-based and non-formal learning methods as core tools. Creative expression is not treated as an additional activity, but as a way for young people to think, reflect and communicate across cultural and linguistic differences. Through storytelling, visual work, performative practices and collective artistic production, participants explore how migration is embedded in everyday life and how shared cultural elements connect different parts of Europe.

We are looking for partner organisations that work directly with young people and have experience or interest in youth exchanges, cultural projects, arts-based activities or community work. Partner organisations should be rooted in their local context and able to bring concrete everyday perspectives into the project, rather than purely academic or theoretical approaches. Experience in non-formal education, intercultural learning or creative methodologies is an asset, but openness to collaborative design and co-creation is equally important.

The project aims to create a space where young people can recognise common ground across diverse European contexts, question simplified narratives about migration and engage with living cultural heritage through artistic and participatory processes. Partners are expected to actively contribute to the learning design, preparation of participants and follow-up dissemination activities within their local communities