Town Twinning

21
Rotary Club Of Kirkcaldy

description

A talk to the Rotary Club of Kirkcaldy by Robert Main, Chair of the Kirkcaldy Ingolstadt Association

Transcript of Town Twinning

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Rotary Club Of Kirkcaldy

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“But, other than providing a destination for councillors in need of a holiday, what is the point of twin towns and have they had their day?”

Peter Davies, Mayor of Doncaster (2011)

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• Earliest form 1836 – Paderborn Germany and Le Mans France• Starting in 1905 Keighly West Yorkshire “sister cities

arrangements Suresnes & Puteaux France• First recorded modern twinning agreement between Keighly

and Poix-du-Nord, France in 1920 after World War 1• Twinning started soon after 1945• Mostly countries divided by war• Promoted by Council of European Municipalities in 1951• 1950’s huge increase in the number an range of twinnings

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Nowadays, twinning is about:

•understanding cultural differences•involving everyone in the community – young and old•coming together to share experience and expertise at educational, social, cultural and business levels•establishing a dialogue to understand people and learn from them•encouraging co-operation and international development•giving people an opportunity to promote their own region.•No prescriptive blueprint

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Scale:-

•No retained list but:-•160 countries with twinning links worldwide•43 countries within Europe•40,000 twinning links across Europe•More than 2,000 in the UK alone. •Since forming the very first in 1944, Coventry has gone on to collect 25 more, giving it more than any other city.

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Rank Overseas country British twins – top 10

1. France 10802. Germany 5003. USA 1434. Poland 785. Italy 566. Netherlands 527. China 428. Russia 409. Belgium 3510.Czech Republic 31

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Rank British locality Twinning links – top 10 localities

1 Coventry 262 Sherborne 213 Wirral 184 Desborough 155=Newcastle Upon Tyne 145= Whitstable 147 Edinburgh 138 East Staffordshire 129 Birmingham 1010= Barnet 910= County Durham 910= Manchester 910= Milton Keynes 910= Portsmouth 910= Wakefield 910= Wolverhampton 9

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Coventry was the world's first twin city when it formed a twinning relationship with the Russian city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) during World War II. The relationship developed through ordinary people in Coventry who wanted to show their support for the Soviet Red Army during the Battle of Stalingrad.[5] The city is now also twinned with Dresden, Lidice and 25 other cities around the world

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Overseas countries

•The 2525 links are spread across 90 overseas countries.

•Most links established in the 1950s and 60s were with localities in France and Germany.

•In the1970s, France and Germany were joined by the USA.

•In the 1980s, these three countries were joined by China, Italy, and Nicaragua.

•In the 1990s, these three countries (France, Germany and the USA) were joined by Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, and Poland.

•Since 2000, most new links have been with localities in France, the USA and Poland.

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Town Twinning - Douzelage International

The Douzelage movement was the brainchild of the Granville and Sherborne Twinning Associations in 1989. Delegates of the twelve founder members, one for each European Community member state, met in 1991 in Granville to sign the charter formally bringing Douzelage into existence.

The aims of the Douzelage are to promote and foster the spirit of Europe and to establish among others educational, economic, tourist, sporting and cultural links between the towns for the mutual benefit of the inhabitants thereof.

The name is a combination of douze for twelve and jumelage for twinning, and although the number of member states and the number of our member towns has grown in the meantime, as the EU is sticking to its twelve stars, so we are sticking to our douze.

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The original 12 founder members were:

Altea, Spain Bad Kötzting, Germany Bellagio, Italy • Bundoran, Ireland Granville, France Holstebro, Denmark • Houffalize, Belgium Meerssen, Netherlands Niederanven, Luxembourg Preveza, Greece Sesimbra, Portugal Sherborne, United Kingdom

Towns that joined later are:Karkkila, Finland - 1997 Oxelösund, Sweden - 1998 Judenburg, Austria - 1999

In a first step of further expansion, 5 new towns joined the Douzelage in harmony with the European enlargement process:

Chojna, Poland - 2004 Kőszeg, Hungary - 2004 Sigulda, Latvia - 2004 Sušice, Czech Republic - 2004

Türi, Estonia – 2004

Since 2007, seven further towns have joined the organisation:Zvolen, Slovakia - 2007 Prienai, Lithuania - 2008 Marsaskala, Malta - 2009 Siret, Romania - 2010 Agros, Cyprus - 2011 Škofja Loka, Slovenia – 2011Tryavna, Bulgaria - 2011

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There are 19 twin and partner towns in Fife

Town Twinning and Fife

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Ingolstadt and it Twin Towns

Presented in July 2012 the Flag of the Council of Europe in recognition of their

contribution and commitment toTown Twinning

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Ingolstadt, Germany Carrara, Italy

Grasse, France

Opole, Poland

Gyor, Hungary

Moscow, Russia

Murska Sobota, Slovenia

Manisa, Turkey

Kraguyevac, Serbia

Kirkcaldy, Scotland

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as a device, town twinning is modular. It has been taken up and used by numerous different interest groups, in numerous different historical

and geographical contexts, with numerous different ends in mind.

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town twinning is not some quaint pastime of a bygone post-war era, but is something current,

something contemporary, something of recently growing incidence – and probably, therefore, of

recently growing importance as well.

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"Dull, in Perthshire, and Boring, Oregon forges an unlikely link when Elizabeth Leighton, who lives in Aberfeldy, near the Scottish village, was on a cycling holiday in the US. She

passed through Boring, and immediately phoned her friend, Emma Burtles, a resident of Dull, with an idea to link the two communities together."