Andy Pryce

First Secretary Public Affairs Washington

FCO Logo
« The importance of... | Main | Credibility and the... »
Tuesday 30 September, 2008

Exchange, exchange, exchange

A number of Embassy colleagues attended a workshop at the Brookings Institution over the summer that looked at shared transatlantic policy priorities and public diplomacy. The workshop concluded that there would be most benefit from Europe and the US working together to strengthen the systematic acquisition of political capital and and trust through young leadership programmes, educational and proffesional exchanges and international public events on shared concerns.

Gordon Brown wrote on this theme during his April visit to the US. It would take be some time to record all the misconceptions that I held about the US before I came to live here as a 21 year old junior diplomat. My experiences have convinced me of the value that exchanges can have. This year's class of Marshall Scholars has just headed off to the UK.  The British Council network of young leaders, TN2020, is about to have its first summit in Dublin and Belfast. Over the coming months I will be looking for opportunities widen UK and US exchanges - I have been talking to a few think-tanks about how to do this. I would be very interested to hear the views and ideas of readers. 

Posted at 16:44 30 September 2008 by Andy Pryce  |  Comments[2]

  • Share this with:
Comments:

This is a sound foundation to proceed, more especially if the exchanges are conducted in the true spirit of mutual learning and listening. There are some on Capitol Hill who look on exchanges in this way: 'Our people go there so they can find out how great we are and their people come here so they can find out how great we are.' There is a great new book on the power of exchanges during the Cold War by Giles Scott-Smith called Networks of Empire which presents detailed cases of the working of US exchanges in the UK, France and Netherlands.

Posted by Nick Cull on October 04, 2008 at 02:55 PM EDT #

Have you seen the Canadian DFAIT's eDiscussions? Here is the link: http://geo.international.gc.ca/cip-pic/participate/menu-en.aspx. The Canadian discussions are intended to dialogue with Canadians. But I wonder if discussions like these might be possible in the US and the UK as a way to link students in the home country with those in one or more different countries around topics on which mutual exchanges could be beneficial. Embassies could invite university classes in each country to participate and then publicise the results.

Posted by David Billington on October 05, 2008 at 12:13 AM EDT #

Post a Comment:
  • HTML Syntax: NOT allowed

Search

Feeds

Tag cloud

Blogroll

Evaluation