Painting a New Bond With Our Freiburg Twinning Friends Despite the Lockdown

Published on: 22 Jun, 2020
Updated on: 24 Jun, 2020

“Autumn in Guildford” by Marylin McNie

By Barbara Ford

chair, Guildford Twinning Association

The pandemic lockdown has unlocked a new bond in the twinning between Guildford and Freiburg.

Although our Mayor and their Oberbürgermeister have exchanged messages of sympathy, events have had to be cancelled wholesale, visits suspended, and so on. Postponements include Freiburg’s own 900th-anniversary celebrations, involving contributions from Guildford and Freiburg’s 11 other twin towns.

But some cultural exchanges are continuing. One of the Freiburg celebrations, now rescheduled to summer 2021, will be an exhibition of artworks by local living artists contributed by each twin town. Guildford has sent two very different works, an attractive Guildford-related painting by Marylin McNie, plus an unusual conceptual work by Nick Pyne. See what you think.

“Caryatids” by Nick Pyne

Next year Freiburg is the site for an exhibition of works by several Guildford artists, our response to the exhibition in Guildford last year of works by five Freiburg artists. The Guildford Twinning Association (GTA) is now helping put that together, and this all helps the two towns stay in contact.

Then there’s the theatre. Germans love Shakespeare so much they have adopted him as German? Catch our video of the GTA’s spring lecture “The German Love Affair with Shakespeare”, by the distinguished Guildford-educated academic Dr Ben Schofield, of King’s College London, posted online here:

Our autumn music lecture is planned for October to celebrate Beethoven’s 250th anniversary. Professor Erik Levi, the eminent Guildford-resident academic and musicologist and his cellist wife Jo Levi will trace the composer’s development through his cello sonatas. Lockdown permitting, they will do this live, but we will video it for YouTube in any event.

Guildford Twinning Association is a voluntary association which supports the twinning of Guildford and Freiburg in south-west Germany, promoting social, sporting, cultural, business, tourism and educational contacts and exchanges, in short, co-operation and friendship.

See our website at www.guildfordtwinning.uk. Do join us.