The Erasmus exchange scheme is to be massively expanded under new EU plans. The programme will be renamed Erasmus+, and will encompass education, training, youth and sport initiatives, as confirmed by an agreement between Parliament and the European council on Wednesday.

The Australian High Commission has given support to Bran Nue Dae, a musical comedy to feature in the Inaugural Accra International Film Festival to share the values of forgiveness and reconciliation with its Ghanaian counterparts. A statement signed by Mr Walter Kudzodzi, Public Affairs Officer at the High Commission, copied to Ghana News Agency on Friday, said: “Bran Nue Dae is a coming-of-age musical comedy that celebrates family, forgiveness and reconciliation, set against the spectacularly beautiful Australian landscape”.

Buddhist associations from both Taiwan and the Chinese mainland were involved in a gesture heavy with symbolism on Thursday. Taiwan’s Ling Jiou Mountain Buddhist Society brought a Tara Guanyin statue to Putuo Mountain, one of China’s four Buddhist mountains. A total of 27 monks and 374 pilgrims from Taiwan accompanied the statue which is a smaller version of Ling Jiou Mountain’s iconic Guanyin statue. It will be placed in Putuo Mountain, and the gesture marks deepening exchanges.

On Saturday, after several weeks of preparation, six student poets from the D.C. Youth Slam Team and three adult poetry teachers are scheduled to leave the District, bound for Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, then on to the city of Tshwane, where they plan to participate in a two-week cultural exchange focused on poetry and social justice. The students and teachers are scheduled to meet youth poets, activists and writers in South Africa who are engaged in the movement to build a better society.

Increasing U.S.-Iran cultural exchanges could lay the groundwork for better relations between the two countries, believes a prominent think tank here, despite the prevalence of stereotypical memes of the United States as the “Great Satan” and Iran as part of the “Axis of Evil”.

The Embassy of Malta and the Culture Diplomacy Fund in cooperation with The Malta Film Commission organized on the 17 of June 2013 an event entitled ‘CineMalte – les possibilités d’une Ile’. This was the first time ever that such a cultural activity promoting the Maltese cinematographic industry was held in Paris.

The ambassador of Tunisia in Brasília, Sabri Bachtobji, is promoting his first official visit to São Paulo this week, with an agenda full of engagements turned to promoting trade, investment tourism and cultural exchange. “I believe much in economic diplomacy,” said the diplomat to ANBA on Wednesday (26), after a meeting with Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce president Marcelo Sallum, and Foreign Trade vice president Rubens Hannun, at the organisation’s offices, in São Paulo.

The International Association of Music Colleges and Universities (IAMCU) has launched to facilitate global collaboration between schools to 'best equip students for future success'. The three founding schools are: The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London, England, LAMA College for Music Professional in Los Angeles, USA and Academia de Música Fermatta in Mexico City & Guadalajara, Mexico.