Building Bridges in Practice
We know that BridgeEurope's idea of building bridges and fighting polarization seems quite abstract or even somewhat lofty to many.
We understand the skepticism: We have become so used to our divided societies that bridging these gaps appears impossible. But we promise you - it’s not!
We see that our events at BridgeEurope provide the participants with new perspectives on the debates of our time, that they create understanding and respect for other opinions. BridgeEurope events have the potential to burst the filter bubbles we are all so trapped in, creating a eureka moment that lasts as participants spread the ideas of viewpoint diversity and constructive engagement in their daily lives.
“How often in your life do you find yourself discussing highly charged topics in a respectful way with complete strangers who often don’t agree with you at all? That’s right, never!
So, join the next Bridge event and burst your ideological bubble. ”
To get a better idea for how our events work, you find a couple examples of past events below…
Example 1: BridgeEurope Speed Dating
This is an extremely popular BridgeEurope classic which exemplifies perfectly what Bridge is all about. In a classic speed dating format, participants are meeting a range of new people and get five minutes to talk to each of them before everyone rotates and gets assigned to the next dating partner. In the Bridge version of speed dating, however, we skip the usual superficial small talk and get right down to the nitty-gritty. With each new partner a new hot and polarizing topic has to be discussed- the type of topics that bring the necessary explosiveness to cause arguments at the dinner table even in the most harmonious families: Should drugs be legalized? What is your opinion on abortions? Could you marry a person that has opposing political views?
Our experience is that even in seemingly homogenic groups of young international university students, an astonishing variety of opinions is being expressed if a setting is provided that encourages to express also not so mainstream opinions.
Example 2: Brexit From Both Perspectives
Our Brexit event is another great example for the spirit of our events. Inspired by the Bridge-Mindset, we invited two speakers with opposing views on Brexit and asked them to explain their respective positions. So far so normal.
But as all our Bridge events, it was not be top down - we rather encouraged participants to speak their mind and to listen to those that are of different opinion. All in line with our philosophy to bring people with different viewpoints together to foster constructive discourse. Listen to understand rather than to reply - one of our leading principles!
And then we gave the event a special Bridge twist: Participants had to debate the issue of Brexit but instead of defending their own position on the issue they were assigned to either the “remain” or the “leave” side and had to defend the assigned position - a great exercise to look at an issue from different perspectives.
Example 3: A Different Type of Pre-Election Debate
Our last and third example for how our events build bridges, is an event that our chapter in Maastricht (NL) organized in the light of the Dutch general election 2021. BridgeEurope invited six of the major political parties to a panel discussion a couple of days before election date. Besides helping students with the decision on how to vote, the event aimed at promoting the Bridge-Mindset at campaign time when polarization seems to be strongest.
Our event was not a classic pre-election event! We had enough of seeing pre-election debates in which politicians talk about and against each other instead of with each other. Therefore, we forced the participating politicians to discuss policy issues solution-oriented.
For example, at the end of the event, after an hour of heated debate, we asked each of the politicians to give a short speech about what one of the other competing parties does particularly well and what ideas of that party they most sympathize with.
It was stunning to see politicians praising each other - Bridge magic!