About Our Europe

We travel, we meet people, we do interviews to understand what is going on in Europe. Our Europe is about engaging in Europe. Socially, politically, intellectually and concrete by traveling around Europe’s many different countries. Our Europe is about sharing knowledge and stories from our journeys and work. In this way Our Europe is an alternative take on Europe and the debate about European affairs as we both focus on individual stories and on how societies develop.

As we travel we produce films, texts, podcasts and online teaching. When we are back home in Denmark we do lectures, workshops, debates and teaching.

You can follow the publications on this website if you want to see, read or hear the stories from our travels. You can also have us do a presentation at your school, institution or conference. We love to get out there to meet people personally and share our stories, insights and opinions.

 

New journey – Nov. ’18 until March ’19.

Once again we will be traveling around Europe from November 2018 to March 2019. We want to get an understanding of Europe’s condition before the European Parliament election in May 2019. We want to talk to Europeans who influence and define the development in Europe. This time we are visiting a series of countries in the Eastern part of Europe which we haven’t visited before. We will look into the relation to Russia, the situation for migrants and refugees in Southern Europe, we will visit the authoritarian Hungary and Macron’s France. While we travel we’ll publish podcasts, texts and more and you can follow us here on our blog, on Facebook and on Instagram.

Journey #1 – Who are the young Europeans? May ’13 to May ’14.

On our first investigative journey we visited 24 European countries in 12 months to investigate the question: Who are the young Europeans? We drove 25.000 kilometres, made more than 500 interviews and stayed in 100 private homes. From west to east, from north to south we got an understanding of what is happening in and for the European youth generation. Our ambition was to get to know as many as possible, listen to their stories and understand their sitution by letting their interests and context be the starting point for our conversation. We had unique meetings and honest conversations about the situations, dreams and challenges of our fellow European youngsters.

As we traveled we were doing an online teaching programme for 2.500 Danish students who followed us on our journey. Students used us as their European correspondents.

Journey #2 – How can we make change today? – September to December 2015.

This journey was about finding out, how we can make change. Our generation will live in a very dramatic period and we, the young and new generation, have not only the option but also the responsibility to become a generation of decisive change makers. On this four month journey in 2015 we visited Samsø, Istanbul, Athens, Lesvos, Palermo, Nice, Madrid, Amsterdam and Berlin where we met a series of young change makers – media activists, self-sufficient village entrepreneurs, protesters, aid workers and many others – who engages in current challenges, people who all make changes in their own way. During this journey we stood in the middle of the historical flow of refugees who came to Europe in the autumn of 2015.

Journey #3 – Around the brexiting Great Britain

In the spring of 2017 we traveled around Great Britain – England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. We traveled around to find out what different young Brits with different economic, cultural and political backgrounds thought about their personal and political situation after a small majority voted for a Brexit in June 2016. We met a British youth generation who try to take a stand in a period defined by changes and differing interests. We experienced a class society, we experiences nationalism, differences between generations, and we heard about the British past and future and about growing up in a country that used to be a global empire.

Our Europe so far..

Since May 2014 we have made more than 300 presentations to more than 50.000 students. We have visited schools, libraries, parliaments. We have given talks and participated in debates in Berlin, Brussels and Alpbach in Austria. We have shared our stories in newspapers, magazines, on television and in the radio. Our main ambition with our work is to create more solidarity and hard working optimism in our generation. We are lucky that we can work full time in Our Europe and we hope yuo will contact us if you in any way think we could collaborate about creating debate, story telling, events and positive change.

The Europeans Parliament’s prize for the best youth project in Europe

In 2014 Our Europe was awarded the European prize for the best European youth project in Europe. More than 500 projects were in the run up. With the prize followed 5000 euros and the possibility to participate in several international conferences about European democracy, activism, culture and youth policies.