1. THEME Development and education for future through valorisation of the past Report from the Citizens meeting in Capo di Ponte 07-11 October 2006 Town Twinning Programme 2006 Since a long time ago there have been collaborating links between Capo di Ponte (Italy) and Tanum (Sweden). The background came from the most important common feature of the two towns which is the existence of a UNESCO World Heritage site of prehistoric rock art in both. Since 1994 when the Tanum rock carvings area became listed in the UNESCO World Heritage list, the collaborating links have been reinforced both on the scientific level and on the level of collaboration between the schools of Tanum and of Capo di Ponte. Students from Tanum visited Capo di Ponte in 1999 and students from Capo di Ponte visited Tanum in 2001. But already in the late 1950 th professor Anati visited Tanum to study the rock carvings. In April 2006 the mayor of Capo di Ponte, Mr Francesco Manella, offered the mayor of Tanum, Mr Clas-Åke Sörkvist, the possibility to create a twin-town partnership between Tanum and Capo di Ponte. Capo di Ponte invited the municipality of Tanum to a citizens meeting in order to support and accelerate the preparation of a new town-twinning agreement between the two towns. The meeting was supported by the European Commission s DG Education and Culture under the TOWN TWINNING programme. A town-twinning link will be an official reinforcement and a further step of the already existing relationship between the two towns due to previous collaborations, mostly scientific, regarding the rock art sites. An official twinning agreement is planned to be concluded in August 2007. 2. PROGRAMME The event focussed on the educational scopes and the intearactive feature of the various activities. The programme was short but various and intensive. The planned activities have been held all as foreseen, there have been some little changes only in their sequence, trying to exploit the best weather conditions for the open-air programmes. Saturday, 7 th October, day 1 The Tanum delegation left from Tanumshede by bus at 07.30 a.m. for the first stage to Gothenburg Säve airport. They travelled by Ryan Air to London Stansted and landed at 10.20 local time. The journey continued by Ryan Air to Bergamo in Italy, where they arrived at 18.45 local time and where they met Ms Francesca Feller, tourist guide, who accompanied them by bus to the final destination: Capo di Ponte. On their arrival they were welcome by Mr Francesco Manella, the mayor of Capo di Ponte, and by Ms Pierfranca Mottinelli, the local council s responsible for culture. The guests were accommodated in the Graffiti Park Hotel, then they were offered a rich welcome dinner. At the end of the evening the tourist guide distributed to the Tanum delegation members a dossier containing informative material about the Vallecamonica (Camonica Valley) - where Capo di Ponte is situated- and the most important information about the sights of the surrounding territory, which the guests were to be shown directly in the following days. Sunday, 8 th October, day 2 The day started with the event opening ceremony in the town hall. Participants in the ceremony were politicians, civil servants and citizens from the host town and the Tanum delegation. In his opening speech mayor Manella talked about the importance of confronting and getting to know
different cultures, habits and traditions of different countries, and about the crucial role of young people in intercultural changes. The vice mayor of Tanum Mr Lennart Larson, after having thanked the organisers for their hospitality and having expressed their enthusiasm for this important twin-town collaboration based on such an important topic as a UNESCO World Heritage Rock Art site, presented a banner and a granite stone, both decorated with the logotype from the municipality of Tanum, and the two towns exchanged symbolic gifts. After the opening ceremony the program continued with : - Introduction, working plan and expectations of the participants from the event. - Audiovisual presentation of the two towns: in general and focussing on the UNESCO World Heritage site.
- Introduction to the European Commission s Town-Twinning Programme a new horizon in bilateral relations and the role of active citizenship. In the afternoon the invited delegation had the opportunity to visit the two rock art sites of Seradina and Bedolina and the antique Church of San Siro Monastery, where they visit also the Pieve di San Siro, symbolic monument of Capo di Ponte. Afterwards, having returned to the hotel hall, the Swedish guests were shown a documentary about the antique Roman parish churches on the occasion of the those days on-going cultural event of Vallecamonica Del Bene e Del Bello. In the evening they participated in the local wine festival in the near town of Losine. The evening ended with a visit to The map of Bedolina in nightlight.
Monday, 9 th October, day 3 The Tanum delegation members Sanna, Sara, Jonathan, Göran and Hans visited a local school in Capo di Ponte. The school was a private one managed by the Roman Catholic Church. They had the opportunity to meet students and teachers and join the education. The others continued the discussion about the preparation of the official town-twinning agreement in order to further develop the collaboration between the two towns. But before that the Tanum guests visited the local traditional cheese production in Caseificio Sociale di Valle Camonica e del Sebino. In the afternoon the participants visited Lovere on the coast of Lake Iseo and the recently excavated Roman amphitheatre. In the evening a dinner was organised at Camuni Bed & Breakfast in Pescarzo with folkloristic and mutual tasting of local products. From Sweden and Tanum the guest delegation brought smoked salmon, herring, caviar and crispbread. Tuesday, 10 th October, day 4 The day started with a visit to the UNESCO World Heritage Rock Art site of Capo di Ponte, Parco Nazionale Delle Incisioni Rupestri, Naquane, with a very impressive number of rock carvings. The guests were guided by efficient local guides. Even the visit to professor Anati and the Institute for Prehistoric Research made a remarkable impression. It was amusing to listen to him telling about his first visit to Tanum in the winter in the late 50s when he had serious problems with a tremendous quantity of snow and a car not prepared for driving in snowy conditions. In the afternoon the programme continued with the workshops about the valorisation of the World Heritage sites for tourism and local development stakeholders role, exchange of experiences, ideas, and about the role of local/typical agricultural enterprises in territorial development exchange of experiences and ideas.
The participants from Tanum, who own grounds in the World Heritage area, presented their project: on their grounds they prepared walking-tours in the area and these walking-tours will be accessible for the public. In the evening it was time for the big Good-bye party. With a lot of delicious food and drink. Everybody who participated in any of the programmes (citizens, guides, drivers, interpreters, politicians, civil servants etc.) was there to spend that last evening together, and everybody had an amusing evening. At the end a youngster from Sweden and an elderly lady from Italy cut a big cake decorated with the Swedish and the Italian flag. After that the Swedish guests received gifts from the hosting town. Wednesday, 11 th October, day 5 The invited delegation left for the airport of Milano Malpensa at 6.00 a.m. to take the SAS flight to Gothenburg via Copenhagen. From Gothenburg to Tanum they travelled by bus. They arrived at Tanumshede at about 17.00 in the afternoon. 3. SET OBJECTIVES In the future cooperation it is important to focus on the following aspects: Further development of the already existing links mainly scientific - between the two municipalities even on the informal level of ordinary citizens, which will be possible through the periodical twinning meetings, once in Capo di Ponte, once in Tanum, by organising interesting activities for a wide spectrum of inhabitant types. Developing and reinforcing the European citizen feeling through getting to know another culture of another country making part of the same big family, the European Union, and entering in the network of twinned European towns, developing a sense of joint belonging and commitment to the European integration even if living in a small town.
Exchanging ideas and experiences on concrete benefits of European integration on a local level, and make it possible to make even individual experiences and making friendships: for example attending the local school, getting to know the local people of the other town and their different culture, traditions and habits in everyday life. Involving actively in the planned activities as big number of inhabitants as possible, and for the scope the programme will be prepared considering different kind of interests and different local groups providing a rainbow of various activities so that everyone can find something for his interest. 4. THE EVENT AND ITS PARTICIPANTS The meeting took place in Capo di Ponte from 7 th to 11 th October 2006. The local community of Capo di Ponte were actively involved just from the beginning of the event planning phase through the implementation up to the follow-up of the event. The Municipality gathered enthusiastic people to help their competent officers and set up an Organising Team, which prepared the meetings aimed to prepare an official town twinning arrangement, and also the rest of the planned activities ( beginning to get to know each other ), the accomodation of guests, organised the availability of the meeting rooms, the guided site visits, etc. and every formal and informal meeting between the invited delegation and the local people. They organised a preparative campaign to let people know the town twinning intention, the European Town Twinning Programme and its objectives, the objectives of this twinning in particular, to promote the importance of civil participation and the potential benefits of a twinning link between Tanum and Capo di Ponte. They promoted the event exploiting mostly informal information flows mouth-to-mouth among the organising team members and the inhabitants to raise enthusiasm and willingness of the inhabitants of Capo di Ponte to participate numerously and actively together with the Tanum delegation. As Capo di Ponte is a very small community, the information ran around quickly. They worked in constant consultancy with the Tanum municipality regarding all the details of the programme and the accompanying issues (arrival and departure, accomodation, meals, etc.). In Tanum they also were preparing the meeting with enthusiasm and spreading information all around the community. The citizens of Capo di Ponte participated numerously and actively in all the activities together with the guests. The invited delegation from Tanum was made up of 14 people, one less than it was planned. Unfortunately Mr Bertilsson, two days before departure, had an incident and could not participate in the meeting. To have a wide support of the collaboration between Capo di Ponte and Tanum and in order to prepare a new town-twinning agreement, the municipality of Tanum engaged participants from different interest groups of the local community. The Tanum-delegation consisted of 1 politician, 2 civil servants from the local government, 2 teachers and 3 students from the school, 3 ground owners in the rock carving area, 2 stakeholders of cultural tourism and local business development. The participants were namely the following: 1. Mr Lennart Larson, vice mayor of the municipality, born November 21, 1954 2. Mr Ulf Björkman, head of the administration of the municipality, born January 26, 1946 3. Ms Kerstin Danielsson, business adviser of the municipality, born April 16, 1944 4. Mr Hans Schub, teacher, born August 9, 1960
5. Mr Göran Larsson, teacher, born April 29, 1948 6. Ms Sanna Davdisson, student, born January 22, 1991 7. Mr Jonathan Göthlin, student, born September 25, 1991 8. Ms Sara Kristiansen, student, born August 14, 1991 9. Ms Inger Persson, manager, The Rock Art Center, born September 28, 1957 10. Ms Britt Limdal-Hansson, local agricultural entrepreneur/farmer, born February 3, 1950 11. Ms Agneta Andersson, local agricultural entrepreneur/farmer, born February 5, 1948 12. Mr Sylve Andersson, local agricultural entrepreneur/farmer, born September 11, 1947 13. Ms Elisabeth Jonsson, entrepreneur tourism and local business development, born February 4, 1971 14. Mr Anders Larsson, entrepreneur and local business development born October 9, 1965 (7 males and 7 females) 5. CONCLUSIONS An inspiring, instructive and very interesting meeting, with a lot of impressing new experiences about each other between the two towns, which gave many positive inputs for the development to the coming collaboration between the municipality of Capo di Ponte and the municipality of Tanum.
The participants learned how important and interesting it is to meet personally citizens of other countries, other traditions, mentality and habits. Knowing other cultures opens our mind and makes our way of thinking more flexible. The hospitality and the common prehistoric links offer the opportunity to a valuable and multidimensional collaboration in the future. 6. PLANS FOR THE FUTURE REGARDING THE THEME The organising team of Capo di Ponte is now preparing a report about the event underlining what has been learned from it and emphasizing that the town twinning action is financially supported by the European Commission. A report of the event is being disseminated through different channels: in a few days it will be available for the two participating towns, on their websites and even in the local newspapers. For more visibility it will be uploaded even on the homepage of the cultural and touristic association of the territory (SECAS). An article in a regional newspaper is also foreseen. The report will also talk about the planned following works on the official conclusion of the towntwinning agreement. Perspectives of the next meeting have already been discussed, which will be organised in August 2007 with the scope of giving place to the signing ceremony. The mayor and vice mayor of Tanum, Mr Clas-Åke Sörkvist and Mr Lennart Larson, invited a delegation from the municipality of Capo di Ponte to visit Tanum from 18 th to 22 th August 2007, to conclude and sign the official town-twinning agreement. The future town twinning actions will target the following groups in particular: 1. Young people and children, to educate them about the future of Europe through the valorisation of the past. An exchange between schools (pupils and teachers) is also foreseen. 2. Stakeholders of cultural tourism and local business development for a wider involvement in the conservation and management of the World Heritage area, about the valorisation of the territory and together developing the tourism and rock carvings. 3. Local agricultural entrepreneurs/farmers producers of typical products of the territory, playing an important role in safeguarding the particular features of each town. They will exchange experiences and ideas about their role in the local development process. 4. Local civil associations to extend the activities and to involve more different local groups. The civil associations will discuss how the local NGOs can contribute to the European decision making process, about gender balance, the involvement of disadvantaged groups in the local decision making process and about the active citizenship in the public opinion. And finally: a proof of real enthusiasm is that in order to understand each other better, the Swedish delegation next February will start to learn Italian conversation in the evening school!