Approach

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Approach

Seeding, planting, harvesting – this is the daily routine in an intercultural garden. But just as important as the richness of flowers, herbs and fruits are the by-products created: Communication, cooperation and new perspectives. To cautiously re-establish lost connections and coherences and to create an opportunity for the people to gain new ground and, similar to a plant, "strike new roots" is the spirit and purpose of the intercultural gardens. They enable work of remembrance and act as refuges at the same time. And they are passages; passages between origin and host country, between past and present. Here migrants can participate, make use of the knowledge they bring along, get to know new entities, ideas, mechanisms – and are able to develop and accomplish their own life perspectives. These processes illustrate how enriching the diversity can be that results from the various cultures. Intercultural relationships do not ignore differences, they live with(in) them.

Intercultural gardens are sites of integration, because

they enable people to ground, embed and find peace for themselves.
intercultural exchange and communication takes place
they enable women to acquire space for themselves.
gardening is work of remembrance, in which sorrows and traumas are also processed.
the gardeners can connect to their own culture of hospitality but nevertheless are able to independently locate themselves in the new environment
the physical-corporal-sensual dimension of "striking roots" can be experienced.
they enable a re-locating and a new range of possibilities to act.
the migrants get the chance to reflect and mirror "their own", to that of others
the refugees become public actors who highlight the universal problems of a country of immigration and make them a central theme
they lead new ways - from a piece of land to a language course.

The challenge: Rethinking culture
Cultural differences do not exist outside of their daily negotiation and procurement. They are, like everything else, in motion. How can we preserve their existence and accept them, while at the same time giving them enough room to change? These are questions Stiftung Interkultur raises during the exploration of (inter) cultural relationships [(Inter)kultur]. The productive "agitating" of this cultural notion opens up new possibilities to re-considering the concept of a "plural society". Furthermore, it eradicates the idea of cultural unity, as well as a common origin being a premise for the existence of a stabile commonwealth. The foundation examines big transnational as well as "small spaces" and aspects of the migrants' everyday life. Above all this, it aims at critically challenging the notion of integration, in view of the migrants' exercised lifestyle.