In the youth Exchange 'Dance and culture have 'class', dance will be the mean to discuss culture. All the participants of this youth exchange will come from a disadvantaged background. Our organizations give them a place where they can discover new possibilities and where they can express themselves with dance, music and art. As each organization has its own context and hereby experience, we want to bring the youngsters together to talk about their experiences. Who are they? How do they identify themselves? The youngsters all experience difficulties to address these questions, especially the youngsters in Belgium. They are growing up between a lot of cultures and are trying to form an own identity out of this. For this reason, the exchange will take place in Brussels. This multicultural city is a melting pot of cultures and invites visitors to think about their identity and culture.The city and the body are chosen as the departure points of the project. It’s the body that lives in the city, that moves, walks and dances. Living in a city influences these movements and perceptions, it changes the relation to others and a world. During the exchange, movements and dance will be used to start a dialogue in and with the city. Through new movements, participants will challenge the city and the common ideas that live there. They will use their experience of exclusion to challenge the city through their body in an universal language. Through this experience, the participants will be given a voice to express their experiences of exclusion. This will happen with pop-up shows that will be located in different places in the city. Participants will be invited to show their show and share their experiences on the 5th edition of ‘Urban Street Dance’as well , an event organized by Matissa Belgium on Saturday 27th of august. During this event, everybody, from professional dancers, acrobats to passers-by, are invited to take the stage and express themselves. The participants of the exchange will be given the opportunity to express what they’ve learned the past week in front of the more than one thousand visitors. They won’t only participate, but will have the opportunity to be a part of the preparations and to get to know what it takes to organize an event of this size. Participants will be able to meet and start a dialogue with local policy officers who sustain the event. They can take part in the promotion of the event and decide how they want to promote the event themselves (ex. visit of a radiostation). Through this, they will be able to raise their voice and exchange experiences with policy officers, and though non-formal learning they can gain the competences needed to organize an event. We hope that participants will have an improved self-esteem, an awareness of their competences and the possibility to express themselves. Participants will communicate in English or another shared language which will improve their language competences. For the organising organizations, the exchange will be an opportunity to share experiences and methods used in their youthwork. Both participants as policy officers and visitors of Urban Street Dance have an improved cultural awareness. Participants will have their own responabilites during this youth exchange. They will be responsable to organise a ‘culture night’, where every evening a country will presents itself, prepares a dessert and shows a typical dance. Participants will be responsable for the daily warming-ups and will have the possibility to share their skills during the workshops. This will empower the participants and will encourage them to take responsabilites in their own lives when they go back. At different times during the youth exchange, the activities and reactions of the participants will be filmed. This will be used to make a shortfilm about the experience and learning outcomes and will be shared with friends, family, partners of the project and participating organisations,...