Launched in 2011 by David Stoleru, a French architect, The Beit Project addresses the need to create dialogue between young people from different social and cultural backgrounds through the history of their city.

The core idea of The Beit Project is to use the city and its history to debate major contemporary issues and build a shared future. It aims to raise young people’s awareness of plurality and cultural diversity through the discovery and interpretation of heritage sites linked to the distant or recent history of their city. It runs in particular a project on passing on the memory of places and citizenship education, called “L’École Nomade de la Citoyenneté” (« The Nomadic School of Citizenship »). Young pupils from different social and cultural backgrounds and different schools, public and private, from the city centre and the outskirts, secular and faith-based, come together within a temporary school that they build themselves. Over two days, working in small groups and in pairs, the pupils search for historical traces still visible from the past within the urban space, traces which they interpret and connect to contemporary themes by meeting local residents, who discuss with them the themes raised in the interviews they carry out. This work allows them to see others as an asset rather than an obstacle, and to build a project shaped by their differences. Since 2010, the project has been carried out in 14 European cities.