Our Twinning partner, Malle, will be celebrating its 50th anniversary since twinning with Saint-Savin this year. To mark this occasion they initiated a cultural project entitled Golden Bridge 2010) which has been recognised, approved and will receive a financial grant from the European Commission towards the cost.  All the Malle twinning partners, includIing Hartley Wintney were invited to become actively involved in this project. The project duration will be from 1st December 2008 to October 31, 2010.  The project requires active involvement and everyone was invited to take part in one or more of the project areas.

There are five project areas, namely:

When our friends from Malle first introduced their idea for the Golden Bridge project, we really didn’t appreciate the scope of the project and the level of commitment that would be required to deliver the five different elements of the project.  We appointed five project managers, but with uncertain deadlines and no great understanding of the deliverables the project started to slip.  Approximately one year from our (mis)understanding of the deadline for project completion, we realised that we needed to rejuvenate things.  We appointed new Project Managers and set off with a new enthusiasm.  At this point we discovered that the deadline was not May 2010, but for some of the projects September 2009, leaving us less than six months to complete the various activities.

The project managers worked together to produce a publicity leaflet that was distributed around Hartley Wintney to raise awareness about Golden Bridge.   We manned a stand at the annual Village Festival in June 2009 and spent time with as many visitors as possible to discuss the Golden Bridge and encourage their participation.  Two project managers were interviewed on Radio Hartley Wintney to talk about the project and its objectives.  The local primary school was approached about producing the Heritage stories and the whole village was involved in our Environment project.  Various individuals and local groups were approached for contributions to Photography and Art and we scoured the village for a composer for the music.

The result of all of this activity was that the Golden Bridge Project raised the profile of twinning significantly in Hartley Wintney and we hope that the people involved in the project at every level will maintain a level of interest in our activities, aims and objectives.

As is self-evident, we did manage to deliver the various projects within acceptable timescales and I believe that the project was a great success.

The Golden Bridge Project is the most significant thing to happen to Twinning in Hartley Wintney for many years.  Vive le Pont d’Or.

Steve Sharpe
Chairman – HWTA

 

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