The project allowed the young people to develop an understanding of the purpose of statues and symbols and their connection to the colonial past. The initial objective was for each group to choose 4 statues that had a colonial history or controversial path and as group decide if they needed to be contextualised or if they though they may need to be removed because of what they represented. The project has developed the young people's understanding of colonialism and institutional racism. For the group from Prague their experience was of being part of the Soviet bloc. The young people developed an understanding of what this actually meant and was represented and how this is can be encapsulated in a public statue. Each society transfers to its members a value system underlying its culture. Our conversations during the exchange developed an understanding of history and society through the use of signs and symbols, and that historical statues and symbols that represent and celebrate part of history can also represent oppression, prejudice and racism. Our discussions developed into how our culture is developed and these symbols play a part in this. The participants developed critical thinking in terms of what these statues represent and what it might say about our societies. We developed a comparisons between British and Portuguese exhibitions that promoted Empire. The exhibition in Porto took place in the iron and glass structure of the Crystal Palace, transformed with a fake art-deco facade, topped by statues of an elephant and a lighthouse. Inside was a series of exhibits addressing Portuguese expansion since 1415. In the gardens, there were replicas of monuments and villages in which inhabitants of the several countries of the colonies—brought to Porto—were exhibited while living in a simulation of their habitats. The colonial exhibition of 1940 in Lisbon sought to reaffirm the extension and importance of the Portuguese empire and was meticulously planned to become a large and festive party. This was a copy of similar exhibition in Crystal Palace in the UK which did exactly the same thing the promotion and celebration of empire. The main objective we achieved is that our participants are using the skills and knowledge gained during our youth exchange programmes, to develop a deeper understanding of the role of symbols and monuments and the cultural and historical context that surround them. Also looking at the Black Lives matter movement and sharing young people's perspectives, realising that young people are the driving force behind these movements of change. We looked at this to develop further what some of these statues represented, the history that they carried with them and young peoples activism today.