The candidacy of Maastricht for Cultural Capital of Europe 2018 and VIA2018
A SUMMARY:
VIA2018 is the organization and artistic platform, responsible for the candidacy of Maastricht as Cultural Capital of Europe in 2018. In 2012 the candidacy must be confirmed by offering a Bid-book.
Between 2012 and 2014 an European jury will judge which Dutch candidate city will qualify, together with Malta, to be Cultural Capital of Europe 2018. The result will be announced in 2014.
Maastricht is not campaigning alone. It is preparing the bid in close cooperation with the cities Aachen, Liege, Hasselt, Heerlen, Sittard/Geleen, the Provinces Dutch Limburg, Belgian Limburg and Liege, the region Aachen and the German speaking community in Belgium.
The Bid -book contains the vision and the themes for the year 2018 and first steps of the program 2018. It will also contain a sketch of the possibilities and limitations of the area, but also about the changes of the collaboration across country borders and the dreams that go with it.
Culture is able to give a town and a region a fresh impetus.
The artistic plan MCHvE Via 2018 starts with the following words:
One day you will wake up to find yourself living in an area through which cultural projects run in an unbroken chain. From brass bands to theatre companies. From pop culture to the plastic arts. From fashion clash to literature. One day you will wake up to find something happening in the area where you live. Art and culture will have assumed their position.
The main issue in our candidature is to strengthen and pimp up the arts and culture in the whole Euregion. We believe that a strong city with an intense cultural life will attract new enterprises and so create new jobs and a positive economic future. We believe also in a new state of mind of the citizens within the Euregion, in which they are willing to cooperate and live together with the people from over the border. We know that we can’t tear down the national borders physically , but mentally we want to jump forward and make a kind of a laboratory for a new Europe of the regions.
At this point we are preparing the bid book.
During the last months, the artistic team of Via 2018 has identified themes. The themes are the hooks on which we will hang ideas and initiatives from the field. The task assigned to the cultural field and artists from outside is intended to show up the collective rituals, traditions and history that bind us together. After all, we need a collective basis on which to build the 2018 capital of culture in this area.
Based on these themes, we will invite cultural institutions, theatres, 'makers', artists, thinkers - in short the entire cultural field - to portray the identity of this region, the face of how we live and work here. We will also be inviting artists from outside the region to come here and compare what they find. This will help us greatly to view our own surroundings from a different angle.
The results of these projects should be visible in our daily cultural practice. In this way we can link the new projects and interventions with what is already there. Because we should also not forget that this area already has an enormous cultural breeding ground. Cooperation between the cities and the regions on the cultural field will give an enormous boost to the whole of the Euregio.
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