Transforming communities, changing lives: new podcast release highlights innovation in the EU

Join academic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari (BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking and BBC 2's Inside Culture) as she takes you on a six-part journey across Europe - showing how Interreg is transforming communities and changing lives with co-operative schemes impacting on issues such as re-using waste products, reducing traffic and resettling refugees.

Across Europe, the way we live, work and play is rapidly changing in the face of unprecedented challenges such as COVID-19 and climate change. But a new season of This Is Europe, the podcast from the EU’s regional development accelerator Interreg will showcase the innovative ways these challenges are being met through cooperation between Europeans from various countries.

With Interreg’s mission statement to ‘dismantle borders, both real and imagined’, This Is Europe gives the inside story on how real change is being delivered to citizens throughout the EU – and beyond – and across priority areas such as the environment, sustainability, the circular economy, food production, migration, social inclusion and culture.

“This podcast highlights innovative policies that can support refugee integration through employment, education, and work placements. It offers practical examples and policy-relevant insights that will hopefully inspire EU leaders." - Alexander Betts, Professor of Forced Migration and International Affairs at Oxford

All episodes are commissioned by Interact, an Interreg programme co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Presented by Shahidha Bari. Produced by Max Bower. A Tempo & Talker production.

About Interreg

Interreg is one of the key instruments of the European Union (EU) that supports cooperation. It consists of about 100 programmes, all of whom fund projects. To get their projects funded by Interreg, public institutions and SMEs need to gather a number of partners from different regions in various countries.

Projects funded by Interreg aim to find shared solutions to these challenges in fields such as health, environment, research, education, transport, sustainable energy and more. See more information about Interreg here: www.interreg.eu

About Shahidha Bari

Shahidha Bari is a writer, academic and broadcaster. She is a Professor at London College of Fashion at the University of the Arts London. She studied English at King’s College Cambridge in the UK and Cornell University in the US, and she is a Fellow of the Forum for Philosophy at the London School of Economics.

Shahidha is an experienced broadcaster on TV and radio, presenting BBC Radio 3's flagship arts programme Free Thinking (known as the Arts and Ideas podcast), and BBC 2's arts review show, Inside Culture.

You’ll find her writing in Aeon, The Financial Times, Frieze art magazine, The Guardian, The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement and others. She won The Observer’s Anthony Burgess Arts Journalism Prize in 2016.