The Angers twinning policy between legacy and prospects

Angers célèbrera en septembre les cinquante ans de sa politique de jumelage. Cet événement ne sera peut être pas qu'une occasion de se tourner vers le passé. 

The Office de coopération internationale d'Angers (Ocia) will celebrate next september the 50 years of the Angers twinning policy. That one started in 1964 with a double relationship between Angers with Osnabruck (Germany) and Haarlem (Nederlands). Those links were ever older than the creation of the Ocia itself (whose website is only in French)) which took place only ten years later. So the anniversary is a favourable opportunity to analyse what has been done and to think to what could be done because Angers is eager to get more recogition and visibility abroad.

Two exhibitions are already planned. The first one, dedicated to the links of Angers with the German et Dutch cities, will be hosted by the Hôtel des pénitentes (September 4-24). The initiative will display contemporary paintings from the three towns and a retrospective of the exchanges. An outlook of the France-Germany relations will also be displayed through the cartoons of the German designer Fritz Wolf. At the same time, another exhibition will also enlighten the actions Angers implemented toward Bamako, the Malian capital (September 4-24 in the Curnonski Hall).


It is not said if the latest partnership with Austin (Usa) will also be part of the event. This should be the case given the new Angers mayor, Christophe Béchu, made clear during his electoral campaign that he wanted that the city be more visible for its economic development and include the economic dimension in our international exchanges : " if it is possible to be happy and hidden, it is complicated to grow being hidden than visible".

Mr Béchu plans "to use all the possible leverages", and among them, the "ambassadors of the territory, today sleeping partners which have not been awaken". An association was mentionned in order to federate all these people who live in Paris or abroad and who could be the "representatives of what going on in our territory".