Paul Smith

What are some of the ongoing projects that you’re working on at the moment at the British Council in Germany?

Look, I’ll come straight to the, for me, the main point at the moment, and one reason why I really wanted this job, which I got a year ago: there’s a big agenda for the British Council here in Germany. And it relates to EU exit. And it now relates also to Covid, and the kind of difficulties that that has brought – but particularly due to EU exit. All our projects going forward will be predicated on the need to prove that Britain has left the European Union, but it has not left Europe. The cultural dimension – the education, and all the people-to-people and institution-to-institution and professional-to-professional relationships that exist between Britain and Germany – is one of the richest such relationships, set of relationships, in the world. It’s deeply intellectual, and also emotional. It’s a kind of family relationship. There’s an extraordinary like-mindedness between professionals and intellectuals, and artists, and academics, and young entrepreneurs and so on in these two countries, and it goes back hundreds of years, not just to the start of the EU. And, in many ways, our task is to rebuild the reputation, visibility and credibility of the UK sectors – arts, education, social sectors – after a period in which we acknowledge that that reputation took a blow with the EU exit. And we actually want to say all our work is on rebuilding, strengthening and creating new relationships across all these sectors, in ways that will, I hope, in a year’s time – if you had to ask me: what’s a quick measure of whether you’ve been successful in your job? – that in a year’s time, all the people and institutions that most matter to us in Germany say, “Remember Brexit? Well, we thought it was going to be a real issue. But it’s passed.” Britain and Germany are still absolutely bound together in terms of addressing the real issues that matter in the world and creating opportunities for their people.