What connects us? Young European Ambassadors create a European Culture Manifesto

What do we have in common across Europe?

This was the question that inspired us, Kaja and Alessandra, as Community Building Board Members of the Young European Ambassadors (YEAs) in the EU/UK/Belarus Chapter, to organise an intercultural community-building activity bringing together YEAs from different Chapters across the network.

We wanted to find a simple way to connect people. And what could be more natural than starting from the things that surround us every day? Food we share with our families, songs we grow up listening to, words and expressions with shared roots, traditions passed from one generation to another, stories, paintings and books that have influenced generations and historical experiences that, although lived differently, have shaped the societies we are a part of.

These everyday elements are often so familiar to us that we rarely stop to think about what they tell us about the connections between our cultures.

From getting to know each other to discovering what we share

The activity took place online on 10 July and brought together YEAs from all Chapters, with the aim of connecting the wider YEA community through a collective work that would reflect the ideas and contributions of all its members.

After some informal conversations, participants were divided into five breakout rooms, each focusing on a different aspect of European identity: Art, Literature & Language, Food, Customs, and History.

The question guiding all five groups was simple: “What do we share in common across Europe?”

The conversations quickly showed how much there is to explore behind seemingly ordinary things. YEAs discussed traditions, music, sayings, food, celebrations, stories, values and historical experiences. And perhaps the most interesting part was that the discussions did not produce competing or contrasting visions. Instead, ideas could be combined, complemented and built upon. Finding common ground often came naturally.

Different traditions could express the same sense of belonging.
Different languages could carry similar stories and emotions.
Different foods could represent the same importance of hospitality and community.
Different historical experiences could still lead to shared reflections about oppression, self-determination, progress, freedom, cooperation. 

Rather than trying to define one single “European culture”, the discussions led us towards a different understanding: European identity can be found precisely in the connections between our many cultures.

From five conversations to one manifesto

After the breakout sessions, everyone gathered back together in the video call. Each group presented the ideas that had emerged from their discussion and, most importantly, a conclusive statement they had created by bringing those ideas together. We listened to five different perspectives, but they were not isolated from one another. They were pieces of the same conversation.

The next step was to turn those five reflections into something tangible. We took the ideas developed collectively during the event and worked on bringing them together into the European Culture Manifesto.

The result is not meant to be a definition of what European identity is, nor a list of traditions that every European must share. Instead, it brings together the ideas and perspectives shared by participants throughout the event and their understanding of what Europe means to us as YEAs. The European Culture Manifesto is a collective reflection that takes us through five different aspects of our daily life, exploring their diversity while highlighting the common elements and connections that emerge across them.

It starts from a simple idea: Europe is diverse by nature, but connected by history, dialogue and traditions that have travelled across borders. Our cultures may speak different languages and take different forms, but centuries of exchange have left us with stories, ideas, practices and values that we continue to share.

United in diversity – in everyday life

During this activity, we wanted to bring the YEAs’ motto, “united in diversity”, to life. What does being united in diversity actually look like?

Perhaps it looks like discovering that a tradition you thought was uniquely yours exists in a different form, somewhere else.
Perhaps it is recognising a familiar feeling in a song of which you cannot understand the words.
Perhaps it is finding similarities between two languages that you thought had no similarities at all.
Or perhaps it is simply sitting around a virtual table, sharing our everyday experiences – eating, celebrating, telling stories, speaking, creating and remembering – with people from different countries and discovering how much we have in common.

This is what we wanted the European Culture Manifesto to capture. It is more than a final product of one online event. It is the result of a shared understanding among young people from different parts of Europe – and a small reminder that sometimes, to discover what unites us, we only need to start with things that are already part of our everyday lives. Because diversity is what makes Europe rich, but the people in it and the connections between us are what make it a community.

Below, you can find the infographic with the contents of the European Culture Manifesto:

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