European youth today experiences a time of multiple crises. When we invited young people from 7 European countries to our “Future Lab Young Europe” exchange in November 2021 (2019-3-DE04-KA105-018654), we were surprised about how pessimistic the future visions of most participants were. But then we understood: After almost two years of pandemic and an increasingly obvious climate crisis as well as a growing gap between rich and poor, future views had changed. The Russian invasion into Ukrainian territory with its consequences such as increasing energy prices, worsening situations for poor people and refugees, and even more antidemocratic populism, have worsened this in 2023. This uncertainty currently creates a tense climate of fear and aggressive discourses, in which societies become more and more divided. In this climate, we see a strong need for exchange projects which connect young people across national borders, cultural and socio-economic groups, with the goal of developing common visions; to provide them with opportunities to challenge stereotypes concerning nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, body standards – in the search for diversity-inclusive futures. Our multilateral exchanges have proven a very high potential of deconstructing nationalist stereotypes as well as culturalisation of problems: an ideal opportunity for young people to define and connect over the spirit of active citizenship. Performing arts, and especially the melting pot of urban cultures and contemporary performing arts that you find in the international ROOTS & ROUTES network, have proven to be a great intersection between very heterogeneous groups; young people can use them as amplifiers to voice their concerns, wishes and ideas to a broad public in live performances and media. This connection between youth empowerment, non-formal education in arts and socio-political participation is a common trait of ROOTS & ROUTES projects. “The ROOTS & ROUTES Experience” (RRXP) is a format of international exchanges that invites young artists to collaborate on common topics. The performance created at RRXP11 was selected by the regional representation of the European Commission in Bonn to perform thrice at the Youth on the Move campaign stop at Gamescom Festival Cologne in summer 2011. RRXP17 won the young.europe.award at Jugendkulturpreis NRW 2018. After a year of a more intimate atmosphere in 2022, where the large seminar house of Landesmusikakademie NRW was not available for us, with RRXP23, we expanded the group back to 40 participants from 8 sending organisations in 7 European countries. We returned to Landesmusikakademie’s large seminar house with its two big rehearsal halls of which we hold fond memories, the last ones from our 2019 version of the project; and for the first time, we invited partners from both northern (Lille) and southern France (Marseille). Also, for the first time since 2017, we are cooperating again with FEE Bucharest/Romania; a cooperation which was on halt for a while since FEE was going through difficult times. The happier we are to welcome them back now. As in all recent RRXP projects, we did not pre-define a topic; but rather use a participatory process involving the groups from all countries, bringing in their opinions and current concerns on the development of the European and global society, the urgent topics moving them currently. Those topics were exchanged and pooled in a moderated process using national pre-meetings, the transnational Preparatory Visit and online tools, leading to a collective decision on a title "Break in case of Chaos" and theme which gave a common umbrella to everybody’s ideas and concerns. The actual exchange focused on dealing with the topic selected by the group in an intense way, using discussions, non-formal learning methods, online research and artistic approaches, to create artistic statements meaningful for all participants, including heartfelt input from everybody; and connecting it to a collective transdisciplinary topical performance which has been played twice on a professional theatre stage to a public audience in Cologne; and has been published as an online video. While this is great to give the participants a stage and audience for their collective vision, it is just as important that the participants were empowered to, and acquired new competences to, communicate their concerns, protest and demands in an artistic way, addressing their contemporaries on multiple channels rather than only via cognitive-rational discourse.