Threads Across Worlds: Building Cultural Connections Between the UK, South Africa and China

Culture does not travel in a straight line.

It moves through people, stories, objects, language, memory, design, food, music, images and the countless ways people understand their own place in the world.

That idea sits at the centre of Threads Across Worlds, a proposed cross-cultural collaboration developed by House of Auré Studios and hARTslane Studio in South East London through the British Council's Connections Through Culture 2026 programme.

Rather than treating culture as something that can simply be exported from one place to another, the project begins from a different premise: what happens when people from different cultural contexts meet, exchange ideas and create something together?

What is Connections Through Culture?

The British Council's Connections Through Culture (CTC) programme supports artistic collaboration between the UK and participating countries around the world.

The 2026 programme is designed to support creative practitioners, cultural organisations, artists, festivals, hubs and collectives working across a broad range of art forms and themes.

Eligible activity includes collaborative artistic development, residencies and exchanges, workshops, talks, research and development, exhibitions, performances, public programmes, professional development and cross-cultural knowledge-sharing.

For 2026, South Africa is among the participating countries, alongside China and a wide range of countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.

The programme therefore creates an interesting framework for thinking about international creative collaboration not simply as cultural exchange, but as a process of co-creation.

From South Africa to China, through the UK

Threads Across Worlds brings together three contexts:

South Africa.
China.
The United Kingdom.

At first glance, these places may seem geographically and culturally distant.

But global creative practice is increasingly shaped by exactly these kinds of connections.

Artists, designers, cultural practitioners and creative organisations are no longer working exclusively within national boundaries. Digital communication, migration, international education, travel and global creative networks have made it possible for ideas to move between places in ways that would have been far more difficult a generation ago.

The challenge is making sure that movement does not flatten cultural differences.

International collaboration becomes richer when each place brings its own knowledge rather than being asked to conform to a single dominant perspective.

Why cultural collaboration matters

There is a difference between presenting another culture and collaborating with people from that culture.

The first can be observational.

The second requires participation.

Collaboration asks people to listen, negotiate, share authorship and make space for perspectives that may challenge their own assumptions.

That process can be uncomfortable at times, but it is also where some of the most interesting creative work can emerge.

A cross-cultural project is therefore not simply about putting three countries into the same programme.

It is about asking:

What can we learn from one another?

What changes when an idea moves between cultural contexts?

What stories become possible when different perspectives are allowed to shape the work?

These questions are increasingly relevant to the creative industries, where audiences, collaborators and markets are becoming more international.

The role of creative partnerships

Partnerships such as HOAS and hARTslane demonstrate another important part of international cultural work: collaboration does not always have to begin with a large institution.

It can begin with people finding one another through shared interests and recognising that their different experiences can strengthen a project.

hARTslane, based in South East London, brings its own local creative context and networks.

House of Auré Studios brings a perspective shaped by work between South Africa, China and international creative communities.

The value lies in what happens between those perspectives.

Beyond cultural exchange

Cross-cultural collaboration can also create practical knowledge.

How do creative practitioners work together across time zones?

How do partners communicate when they have different working cultures?

How do you make decisions when creative expectations differ?

How do you build trust before the work begins?

How do you make sure collaboration does not become one-sided?

These questions are relevant far beyond the arts.

Businesses entering new markets, international organisations developing partnerships and brands communicating with global audiences face many of the same challenges.

Creative collaboration can therefore become a space for experimenting with the broader skills required to work across cultures: listening, translation, adaptation, curiosity and mutual respect.

A living connection rather than a finished product

One of the most valuable aspects of cultural exchange is that its impact does not necessarily end when a project ends.

A collaboration can create relationships that continue.

An artist may discover a new collaborator.

A designer may find a new audience.

A cultural organisation may develop an international partnership.

A conversation may lead to a future project that neither participant could have imagined at the beginning.

That is the longer-term potential of programmes such as Connections Through Culture.

The British Council describes the programme as supporting meaningful partnerships, cross-cultural exchange and long-term collaboration.

Threads Across Worlds sits within that broader question: what can emerge when cultural connection becomes an active creative practice?

HOAS × hARTslane

Threads Across Worlds is being developed through a collaboration between House of Auré Studios and hARTslane Studio in South East London, with a shared interest in cultural connection, creative exchange and the movement of ideas between places.

For HOAS, the project reflects a natural extension of the studio's work across creative strategy, storytelling, design and cross-cultural creative collaboration.

Our work is rooted in the belief that international creative work becomes stronger when cultural context is treated as part of the creative process rather than something added afterwards.

The collaboration also reflects the kind of work we want to continue developing: projects that connect China, South Africa, the UK and wider international creative communities through meaningful exchange.

Learn more about House of Auré Studios and our approach to cross-cultural creative collaboration.

Keep the conversation going

International collaboration starts with a connection, but it grows through continued conversation.

Stay connected with HOAS for future projects, cultural collaborations and perspectives from the spaces where creativity, culture and international exchange meet.