As The Swap investigates whether a groundbreaking social experiment involving a school swap can actually help break down social barriers and build greater acceptance, respect, and understanding between diverse cultural communities, it also looks at the possibility of the experiment backfiring as cultures collide and controversies flare.
The Swap is the first time that everyone participating has ever come close to someone who has such a different worldview. This bold foray into the unknown yields stunning, amusing, heartbreaking, and moving revelations about our mutual ignorance of one another and our profound differences from one another, as well as our shared humanity.
When Ali Kadri took over as principal of the Islamic College of Brisbane (ICB), he made it his mission to help his students become global citizens by fostering dialogue and understanding across diverse groups. Yet, it took him over a year to recruit a small number of families to participate in his experiment, and not all of his teachers approve. Today, six families from Padua College, Mount Alvernia, and secular state high school Ferny Grove go over the river to the vastly different and significantly more multicultural world of south Brisbane and the ICB as part of the experiment’s first phase.
Airdate: Wednesday 8 March 2023 at 7.30pm on SBS.
Season 1 Episode 1
