Cultural Exchange and Comparative Study

This case study explores a student-run project aimed at inspiring community/cultural cohesion and understanding via unstructured discussion sessions.

Case study by Manuela Sadik

What was the aim of your project?

Our aim was to bring together a group of UCL students from a wide range of cultures to discuss multiple topics, ranging from human rights to gender and climate change. We hoped to create a welcoming, friendly environment in which students would feel comfortable with sharing their personal experiences, thereby allowing us to explore each topic in different cultural contexts, learn about other cultures and clarify possible misunderstandings about topics in different countries, e.g. human rights in Ecuador.

What did you do?

Due to COVID-19, lockdown, and the subsequent shift to online learning, each session was held remotely via Zoom. This removed the need to perform certain organisational tasks, such as booking rooms and creating physical advertisements. Instead, a large part of our project was focused on attracting students to attend our sessions via virtual advertisements. We sent emails to the administrators of various departments and asked them to highlight our sessions to their students (e.g. via Moodle and, where possible, social media). We also created social media pages and online groups as a means of promotion.

Regarding the sessions themselves, we strove to create a non-judgemental, welcoming environment in which every participant had the full freedom to share their experiences and to express their opinions. They were free to add to the conversation or challenge a misconception but also free to just listen with no pressure to contribute. Whilst we did prepare some topics in advance (in case the conversation stalled), we chose to keep our sessions relatively unstructured, allowing the conversation to flow naturally. This allowed for the exploration of many topics.

What were the main successes of the project?

Each discussion was very detailed and insightful. We had planned for each session to last roughly an hour, however, most ended up being extended to 1.5 hours because we discussed each topic in such depth. Often, we would explore the historical and cultural context of topics as well as the personal experiences of our participants. As such, our sessions were vastly educational and informative. We consider this to be a huge success of the project.

We have also built many new friendships through this project, e.g. with the regular participants. The sessions provided an opportunity to socialise and get to know many different people and their stories. Remote learning meant that there were not many opportunities to socialise with our classmates and peers, so this was a very valuable experience for us.

What difficulties did you face during your project? What would you do differently?

Many of our sessions were only attended by a small number of participants. Whilst this contributed to an intimate environment that fostered deeper, more personal discussions, we had hoped for a larger group to attend. If we were to do this project again, there would be a stronger focus on creating attractive, targeted advertisements and posting regularly on social media to encourage people to attend. 

What impact has your project had? On whom?

This project primarily impacted the students who attended our sessions by creating an opportunity for them to socialise and learn.