Forum Guimarães, meeting as part of the 'A Soul For Europe' initiative, marked a crucial step in the preparations for Guimarães's assumption of the title European Capital of Culture 2012. It demonstrated the city's determination to reach beyond the local, regional and national context and take the repsonsibility to play a full part in the European debate about cultural citizenship. The Forum brought together a significant group of those who have been involved in directing the European Cultural Capitals and influencial cultural networks in Europe during the last 25 years.
As Paul Scheffer, the keynote speaker from the University of Amsterdam, highlighted, the city (like all in Europe) lives the tension between heritage and contemporary openness, loyalty to its roots and tolerance of new people and new ideas 'yet,' he said, 'this is the essence of living democracy.' Eduard Miralles, President of the Interarts Foundation in Barcelona, argued that a city has to exploit its tradtions to be innovative and realise that 'a fiesta is not just a festival, it's a sacred place.'
Mahir Namur, of the Istanbul European Cultural Association, reinforced the message by saying that placing culture at the heart of political life was not just about creating employment and economic prosperity but about using 'cultural content to change Europe' and what it means to be living in Europe. Hugo de Greef, Director of the Place Flagey Cultural Centre in Brussels and formerly Director of Bruges Capital of Culture, reminded Guimaraes and Maribor for 2012 that 'after all the politics, a Cultural Capital has to be a cultural project' and has to be handed over to the artists to make it happen.
Forum Guimarães was an important link in the chain of discussions throughout Europe that began with the 'A Soul For Europe' Conferences in Berlin - at which EU Commission President Barroso emphasised that now is the moment to realise that Europe has to be a cultural, not just an economic, technocratic and political project. The chain continues with Forum Cluj and Forum Ravello later this month.
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