How to Avoid Preaching Exclusively to the Choir: Extending the Scope of Civil Society Involvement in Cultural Relations

Reaching a broader range of citizens and collaborating with neighbouring sectors becomes more important in many initiatives in the realm of intercultural exchange and collaboration. For many actors who are active in the field of intercultural relations, it is of great importance (and, in some cases, even a genuine objective) to enable encounters with large sections of the population across cultural borders. They have access to a wide range of instruments to bridge differences, to bring heterogeneous groups of actors together, and to create common platforms. When it comes to reaching out to new target groups and fostering innovative approaches by involving a broader and more diverse range of society actors, it can be valuable and inspiring to look at concepts that originated in other sectors that aim for the same objective, such as ‘reaching the hard-to-reach’ (which originated in the health programmes of international aid organisations and in emergency management) and ‘co-creation’ (which has its origins in the private sector). These two approaches will be briefly presented in this essay, followed by concrete examples illustrating the implementation of these concepts in the field of intercultural relations, to reflect which lessons can be derived from this and then transferred and applied.