Renamed ‘Guildford Twinning Association’ Is Now Open To the World

Published on: 21 Jul, 2018
Updated on: 11 Aug, 2018

By Barbara Ford

The chair Guildford Twinning Association gives us news from the renamed group whose aim is to foster better international relations with Guildford…

We have a brand new name! At the May 2018 annual general meeting of the Guildford-Freiburg Association chaired by the Mayor of Guildford, members voted to expand the Association’s remit to embrace any future twinning as well as that with Freiburg, and therefore to change its name to Guildford Twinning Association, or GTA for short.

We are now, like Freiburg itself, open to the world! And if Guildford Borough Council’s current negotiations with Versailles do result in a formal twinning – fingers crossed – we will be ready to leap into action.

This change has no effect on our continuing support for the Guildford-Freiburg twinning – indeed we aim to strengthen it. We are at the moment working to refresh some of the links between our two towns, particularly focusing on young people.

Telemach Wiesinger, a Freiburg photographer and film-maker giving his “Film and
Conversation” presentation as I (Barbara Ford) look on.

We shall continue, as we have for nearly 40 years now, to hold Freiburg and its people very dear and we look forward to many more years of friendship and co-operation between us.

So, the GTA continues its efforts. We are proud to announce the launch of an annual Essay Competition open to all 16-19-year-olds at school or college in the Borough of Guildford, with two prizes of £100 each and a beautiful book donated by Freiburg City Council.

The topic for 2018/19 is “’Green’ lessons from and for Guildford and Freiburg” (Freiburg is one of the most environmentally-conscious cities in Europe.)

Full details and entry form on our website at: guildfordtwinning.uk/essay-competition/ – do encourage young people you know to enter.

Then, with the aim of relaunching the valuable life experience of school exchanges, we have run a consultation with secondary schools in Guildford and in Freiburg, supported by the Freiburg Referat für Internationale Kontakte and Guildford Borough Council, to help us develop a programme for future school visits which suits both sides.

We have sought a solution which will encourage Guildford students of various disciplines, not just German, to participate in a visit to Freiburg. (Our enquiries of Guildford schools have revealed only eight students taking A-level German in the whole borough!)

At the end of May, in the Guildhall, an evening of “Film and Conversation” with Telemach Wiesinger, a Freiburg photographer and film-maker. He showed a series of short “film poems” in black and white, taken with an old 18mm movie camera, and explained (in English) his technique and some of his ideas.

Ros Calow manning our children’s activities stall at the Picnic in the Castle Grounds

Then at the beginning of June, we took part in the very successful and charming council-run Picnic in the Castle Grounds. It was suitable for all age groups but we hoped to appeal to children and we ran a stall providing activities for them while talking to the adults about the benefits of twinning.

And for those who still wonder about the benefits of town-twinning the economic advantages were highlighted by Cllr Matt Furniss, deputy council leader at GBC, who in our newsletter said: “In response to this hard work [by GTA] we feel that the council should also be more proactive in the relationship with Freiburg, particularly in terms of strengthening economic, tourism and business links.

“We now have a cross-party Town Twinning Working Group that will be looking into options to develop these links and also about how we might help the association with its activities.”

To find out more about us, including how to join us, see our website at: guildfordtwinning.uk.