TWINNING COMMITTEE

23 April 2009 Secretary's Report

HEUSENSTAMM

The Mayor of & Malling will be attending the 50 th Anniversary celebrations in over the weekend 29 May – 1 June 2009.

The 25 th Anniversary of the Twinning with Heusenstamm will be celebrated this year, with the main ceremony taking place in Heusenstamm in September. Options to enhance the Friendship Wood are being considered for Tonbridge & Malling.

The exchange between students from the Adolf Eichwein Gymnasium in Heusenstamm with and will take place in the summer term this year, with a reception provisionally scheduled for 29 June at Tonbridge Castle. The Mayor will attend and all members of the Twinning Committee will be invited.

LE PUY

The new chairman of the Twinning Committee in Le Puy, Elisabeth Raffier Cauvin, has been in touch several times and has advised us that two members of the committee have been nominated as the day to day links with Tonbridge & Malling, namely Emmanuelle Faure and Marc Jousserard. They are currently looking to set up an exchange with the newly formed Youth Group in Aylesford. Le Puy sent a number of posters and publications for use at the launch of the Youth Group in March of this year, Twinning having been one of the areas of interest of the members of the Youth Group. The Chairman of the Twinning Committee attended the launch.

Tonbridge & Malling was invited, by the Le Puy Twinning Committee to participate, along with their other twin towns, in a week-long exhibition in Le Puy in May as part of the Foire Exposition Velay Auvergne, the main theme of the event being gastronomy and local produce. The commercial arm of the East Malling Research expressed an interest in participating, but had to decline. Regretfully it was not possible to find another organisation with the necessary resources to provide staff to man a stand and to transport sufficient produce for an exhibition at such a distance.

The Mayor was invited to attend an event linked to the exhibition in Le Puy in mid-May, but has had to decline due to prior engagements.

The Le Puy Twinning Committee has also been asked to provide some contacts for the Little Bridge Theatre Company of Tonbridge who would like to link a drama they are proposing to produce, based on Edward I visited Tonbridge Castle with events in Le Puy in the same era. Following a meeting with two of the members of the theatre company it was agreed that they be invited to present their proposal to this committee.

GRANTS

At the beginning of the year all members of the Twinning Associations will have received a letter explaining that in light of the impact of the global financial crisis and recession upon the Borough Council’s finances, the Council’s Cabinet had decided not to make grant awards this year. The Borough Council is not closing the door to future grant aid assistance if its finances recover sufficiently, but is unable to guarantee this at the present time.

The Snodland Twinning Association had requested that the grant they had received in 2008 be rolled forward to the current financial year. Due to unforeseen circumstances the visits planned for 2008 did not go ahead, but the visit from Moyeuvre is now scheduled for May 2009. This request to use the grant for the visit in May was agreed. The Snodland Twinning Association will be invited to give a verbal report at the meeting following the Twinning visit, and will also be asked to provide a written report later in the year.

contact: Janet Saunders

Julie Beilby Secretary to the Twinning Committee