Since the first getogether in Amsterdam when the Almost Real project was publicly discussed, the term interculutral competence has been met with a great deal critique and commentaries. Here are some views given by getogether participants:
"...European cultural policy issues and strategies are devised to meet certain issues and problems. The issue of cultural policy instilled at the European level is a very difficult one because most of the member states have difficulty with it as they don’t want to give up their national identity and their self-understanding in terms of culture which is always connected to the nation – it’s a kind of schizophrenic situation [the notion of sharing cultures and at the same time continuing to promote national identity]. Yet, at the same time we have cultural policies that do not take into account micro-communities in European countries. Even though this issue is on the agenda the issues about their participation is still denied... Although the so-called multicultural society has been discredited, the other term “cultural diversity” which has replaced the notion of multiculturalism is a very defensive term as it still goes back to the idea of the creation of the nation state and a culture, or ethnicity and a culture or a region and a culture...Intercultural competence - as far as I understand this rather technocratic term - is an aim to approach to come up with a positive strategy to tackle an issue by not being so negative and not to keep naming the problem, but to come up with the strategy instead." — Therese Kaufmann, Amsterdam Getogether, 5 July 2005
"[Intercultural competence] has to do with the ideal of integration into society. But the opposite of this would be the American model where you have different ethnicities, cultural groups living in the same country but apart. I think the ideals of intercultural competence is to acknowledge that this mechanism is closer to the reality, we don’t want to arrive at a situation where different ethnic groups live side by side without interacting. How can we create a situations in such a way that different people in a city start to interact that maintains to some degree the different identity of each group but still create highways of contact?" — Mark Deputter, Amsterdam Getogether, 5 July 2005
"...however, if we take Intercultural Competence as a pro-active term that describes an attempt to tackle a very specific situation and to draw a new composition of society and our movements within it, then we could make it productive for the ECF arts programme and Almost Real. Not so much as an evaluation or a historical overview, but to look at practices in a very specific setting and the inevitable variations between social classes, professional fields, beliefs, regions and countries." — Therese Kaufmann, Amsterdam Getogether, 5 July 2005
"…from my experience it is very dubious to think one is enacting intercultural competence purely on the mobility of people who are working together. It seems that there has to be more looked into how that is done, what are the environments where these international collaborations are happening? What kind of context is created for them? And includes issues such as how long are people working together? Art-making does stimulate intercultural competence in ways that are more effective than in other disciplines." — Igor Dobricic Amsterdam Getogether, 5 July 2005
"... the notion of intercultural competence is problematic yet really interesting. In Sweden, next year [2006] is the year of multiculture which means that all state institutions have to do something that has to do with multiculturalism. There is no extra funding for it, so you are supposed to do it inside your exisitng programme… I see this as a perfect opportunity to criticise it, to show that you can do it in a different way. That’s how I like to think about the ECF dealing with intercultural competence. To make funders understand that a project of [like Almost Real] can contribute to moments of confrontation. We have to think different in terms of timeframes that it would have to be a research project involving social geographers, artists, art historians to work together over a 3 year period, then you have to rethink your scheme quite radically in different parameters. The more urgent issues are: the lack of a shared public sphere in the European context and the role of the media. I would be interested in doing something with artists that really looks at public space and the media situation across Europe and how one could stimulate other approaches through art. And that would for me connect into intercultural competence." — Maria Lind, Amsterdam Getogether, 5 July 2005