On 13-14 May the ICC will carry out an expert visit to Montreal, Canada, one of the first cities outside Europe to join the Intercultural Cities programme.

Ms Ivana d’Alessandro, Head of the ICC Unit, and Mr Daniel De Torres Barderi, ICC expert will meet elected city officials, as well as a wide range of local stakeholders working in the fields of inclusion and diversity management in order to make an in-depth "diagnosis" of the city's needs in relation to intercultural policies and governance.

The programme of the visit also includes a presentation of the Intercultural city concept to representatives of public authorities and civil society, as well as working meetings with the Department of Culture, the Office for the Integration of Newcomers, or the Intercultural Council of the City of Montreal. In addition, the ICC delegation will visit Cari St-Laurent, an organisation whose mission is to welcome, assist and support immigrants in their settlement, adaptation, personal, social and professional integration processes; and Petites mains, an organisation whose goal is to help people in need, especially immigrant women, who are excluded from the job market. The visit will further result in a report that will draw the “intercultural profile” of the city and which will be the basis of subsequent work.

Besides, on 15 May the ICC Delegation and the University of Montreal will hold an information meeting to present the Intercultural Cities Programme to the Union of Municipalities of Quebec (UMQ). The meeting will focus, among others, on the ICC tools to address migration and intercultural relations, political communication in the era of super-diversity, and dynamics between cities and governments for promoting multi-level cooperation through the ICC Policy Lab for inclusive integration. A round table on ICC national networks will close the meeting.