The core areas of the Common Ground Project are the Theatre Labs, which offer an empowering experience especially for those who are active on different levels in refugee relief and integration work.

By using participatory theatre tools, a creative and safe space for dialogue has been created to explore the following questions:

How can we cope with different challenges in the field of aid to refugees and how can we empower civil society? How can we find individual and collective strategies to react to ongoing separations and polarizations in society? How can we overcome polarization and othering?

The project mainly addresses civil society, their voices and their narratives. Civil society is mainly involved in refugee relief and integration work in many European countries. Although there have been many positive experiences, challenging situations and processes of division and polarization must be addressed. Common Ground provides both real and virtual spaces for the voices and expertise of civil society to be shared. This is crucial, since members of this society are close to life realities, desires and necessities.

The project aims to empower and encourage members of civil society to explore and share actions, attitudes and strategies for a way of trans-culturally living together! This cross- border-project offers a network that increases the visibility of transformative lines of actions and strategies, which have been successfully used in concrete moments and situations of exclusion, division and polarization.

In the aesthetic space of the theatre, possibilities for change and transformation are explored in a way that affect actions and strategies. They become visible and easy to experience.

And, finally, the project is about sharing and publishing strategies and manners of action to contribute to social transformation.