19.03.2008

Season 2008: Balance of the 2007 Capital of Culture Luxembourg and its greater regions

Also in 2008 European without frontiers:
“Genius I. The Mission: discover research invent” and Pop Art - Duane Hanson at the World Cultural Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte

It is our duty to see that the positive balance of the 2007 Capital of Culture Luxemburg and its greater region continues its effect into 2008

A successful balance has been drawn by the “2007 Cultural Capital Luxemburg and its Greater Area” says Dr. Meinrad Maria Grewenig, for the World Cultural Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte. After staging a great variety of events over national and regional borders in 2007, assisted by the blue stag icon eye-catchingly symbolizing the cultural border crosser, the effect has extended into the first quarter of 2008: “The experiences of the European Cultural Capital Year outlined a mission to coordinate cultural exchange better and to work and think in networking terms,” stresses Meinrad Maria Grewenig, general director of the World Cultural Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte.
In the words of Grewenig, the European Capital of Culture Year has demonstrated that industrial cultural themes evoke great public resonance. Referring to the World Cultural Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte Grewenig stipulates: “industry culture has grown far out of its infancy and is now standing on at least equal terms with the culture of the theatre and museum.”
Visible signs of the success for the World Cultural Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte in the greater area of Saarl-Lor-Lux are clearly legible. In 2007, over 230000 visitors and more than 2100 group tours, demonstrate that the World Cultural Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte has significantly surpassed its 2006 performance. Positive indicators beyond regional interest were provided by spring’s experience project “Genius I. The Mission: discover research invent” and in Autumn Duane Hanson’s Pop Art “Sculptures of the American Dream” of the Cultural Capital Year programme. To this date the experience project, “Genius I. The Mission: discover research invent”, supplemented at the beginning of December by an innovative genius idea-workshop for children and youths has attracted over 95000 visitors from the greater area and Europe.
This number of visitors is also a call to those responsible: “We need newly coordinated tourist concepts for this valuable target group of cultural tourists in the greater area!” says Grewenig.
“Duane Hanson. Sculptures of the American Dream” currently the sole venue for the Pop Art exhibition in Central Europe can only be seen at Völklingen and “Genius I” arches over 1.5m years of innovation history and ideas in seven theme worlds (supplemented by many active and multimedia stations by high quality knowledge partners and lenders). Yet another factor must be added: “We meet our visitors in the middle of Europe in their mother tongues,” says Grewenig in his Cultural Capital Year balance statement. “All the essential information for the exhibits and the exhibition are presented in three languages: German, French and English. In so doing we provide for all the important European language areas and make an essential contribution to the mediation of in-depth knowledge of innovations and culture in the heart of Europe.”
“We began the European Cultural Capital of the Year with the world premiere of “Macht&Pracht. Europas Glanz im 19. Jahrhunderts” (loosely translated: Might and Magnificence. Europe’s Gloss in the 19^th Century). This exhibition created a new location for the term industry culture. We did our homework for 2007 and proposed and conceived of three excellent supra-regional, major exhibitions, without getting a single cent more from the Cultural Capital budget,” asserts the general director of World Cultural Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte, Meinrad Maria Grewenig. The “challenge of the blue stag,” now consists in extending the networking of the greater region beyond 2007 and thus attaining new impulses for culture tourists to distinguishi the Saar-Lor-Lux area as an exciting, young cultural region. At the heart of this location the World Cultural Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte takes a quite special position.
A step in the right direction was for instance the Saarland/ Rhineland Palatinate card, enabling tourists to benefit in both federal states or also that in Rhineland Palatinate and Saarland a Deutsche Bahn day ticket was valid for up to five fellow travellers. Additionally the high speed ICE/TGV connection in the Southwest and in the scheduling in the future of five trains running daily to Paris will further advance the progression of the European regions!

Back to overview