Page 13 - Re-imagining our Region

Cumar (Con uence)
For our rst Connecting Theme, we want our European Capital of Culture to be one of fairness, openness, and collab- oration, built through Cumar. This is a vital part of our sense of community and place across the Three Sisters, which have been shaped by di erent cultures, identities and activities coming together. Shared approaches have been developed over time from how we produce and distribute our dairy produce to how we participate in sport and culture. Yet
there are missing links, untold stories, and a genuine crisis of con dence for us and regions like us across Europe. In recent decades across the Three Sisters and Europe, our collective sense of purpose and place has been eroded, with the nan- cial crisis bringing us to question the strength of our shared identities, the boundaries of our communities and thus our place in a wider Europe.
Arrivals
We want to diversify and disrupt the notion of arrivals for European Capital of Culture 2020. Arrivals is a state of mind, a way of seeing and doing and a metaphor for openness, rel- evance, innovation and creativity. We want to demonstrate how in Europe the non-metropolitan, polycentric, relatively rural region, has arrived.
As a region of arrivals, the Three Sisters will become a hub and conduit for new ideas based on new relationships that connect the local to the global: a place where the best ideas internationally coalesce with the best ideas locally
to achieve great cultural programming, boundary-crossing creative businesses and an enlightened political class. It is a place where imagination thrives and where creative talent can be ful lled. It is a place to come to (to live, work, create) rather than leave.
Too o en, the story of Ireland is one of departure: particularly of talent and culture. This certainly bears some truth – we are an island nation, our history is shaped almost as much by what the Irish Diaspora has achieved abroad as what is achieved at home. But this is only half of the story. It is also much more central to identities on the west coast than on the east. In the Three Sisters, our story is one of arrivals:
- It was on our coast and up our rivers that the rst immigrants to Ireland arrived 9,000 years ago. These hunter-gatherers, followed several centuries later by met- al-workers enticed by the deposits on our ‘Copper Coast’, were the original settlers and it was through the Three Sisters they discovered the rest of the country.
- It was on the same coast that the Celts, Vikings and Normans arrived. Each arrival re-shaping our culture and landscape. It was these arrivals which urbanised the pop- ulation, adapting mainland European models of urban markets and garrisons. They also introduced religion and the types of social order and legal structure this requires.
In the Three Sisters, we want to amplify the distinct identities, aspirations and stories that make up a contem- porary region bringing together historically separated art forms and processes. We will commission work that links our everyday cultural sensibility to those of our peers in non-met- ropolitan regions of Europe, our families across the world, our twinned towns and cities, exploring shared identities and how cumar transcends notions of place and nation. We will commission new convergent art forms which connect di erent identities, technologies and approaches. We will ex- plore how Europe-wide movement of refugees and economic migrants o ers hope for these new settlers and for Europe as a whole. We will critically re-visit the heritage of the region
to ensure the voices of women are heard and their role in nurturing communities and stimulating social and economic life imaginatively described and presented. We will explore emergent forms of cumar in the cultural sector and champion it as a vital element in welcoming people to our region – as visitors, collaborators and the new Irish and European.
- For century a er century, the Three Sisters have wel- comed or attempted to rebu arrivals from across
Europe – with Celts from Iberia, Brittany and Wales; British colonialists; and in the last y years signi cant numbers of tourists, economic migrants, gentrifying ‘down-from-Dubliners’ and British, and refugees. Our population is growing year on year – in part through ar- rivals of the new Irish (of economic and cultural migrants, refugees and returnees) and in part through a relatively young population (the average age in Waterford is 36 years old). Together, with Europe, we are embracing the opportunities borne of the intercultural region while grappling with the challenges of maintaining cohesion and nurturing tolerance.
- We are a region where the arrival and passing of the sea- sons plays a huge role in how we live and who we are, just as it does in relatively rural regions across Europe where agriculture remains a major industry and where many of our ancestors made their livelihood from the land. This in uences everything from the sporting and cultural cal- endar to the renaissance of the artisanal brewing industry in Wexford. It also gives us a ready-made structure for
our cultural programme which will resonate locally and across Europe.
- We are a region where the agendas, challenges and opportunities of Europe are arriving and converging to shape our agenda for 2020 and beyond. A region without a big city, a region which is struggling to manage eco- nomic and social change, and a region which is nding new solutions to progressively shape its future; is a region of Europe. As ECoC 2020, we will adopt Europe’s issues
as our own and we will show how, with a culture-led approach, Europe can be a better place and regions like the Three Sisters have a future.
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