News

** Having sung together at the Marktkirche, Hannover in our anniversary year 2022, it was the turn of the Oratorienchor to come to Bristol. After a few days of visiting Bristol sights, a first experience for many of the 40 German guests, the two choirs with 150 singers along with the Bristol Ensemble and wonderful soloists combined to give a great concert in our newly refurbished Bristol Beacon concert hall. At the German choir’s request, the programme consisted entirely of English music, and all of the pieces had links with the south-west region of England. The Vaughan Williams...

Read More...

** Our Chair accepted an invitation recently from the German embassy to the annual language teacher festival, this time held at the Goethe Institute in London. At this ceremony, normally a teacher is rewarded for his/her inspiring teaching of German. The ceremony opened with a welcoming speech by the host, German Ambassador Miguel Berger, who had also invited the ambassadors of Austria and Switzerland, and an address by the Guest of Honour, the Rt Rev Dr Christopher Cocksworth, Dean of Windsor, who had served as Dean of Coventry Cathedral and visited its partner city Dresden. What ensued...

Read More...

** The beautiful new twinning signpost has been inaugurated in front of City Hall, in the presence of the Lord Mayor Cllr Paul Goggin, Mayor Rees and Donna Speed, the leader of the Guild of Guardians, who funded the creation of the signpost. . Speeches by the Lord Mayor, Donna Speed and Ann Kennard (BHC chair also representing BITA) emphasised the importance of Bristol's twinnings to the international profile of the city. . . About 70 representatives of the seven twinnings were present, along with the artist, Steve Joyce, the prime mover of the initiative and former twinnings officer, Alix...

Read More...

** November 11 is St Martin's Day in Germany. This day celebrates the Roman soldier turned saint who was such a good guy that he gave half his coat to a beggar during a snowstorm. The most iconic tradition in Germany is a lantern procession, for which children make their own paper lanterns in school. After the sun sets, young and old come together to walk through town and sing songs carrying their colourful lanterns. It was my great honour and pleasure once again to represent the holy Saint Martin at the lantern procession organised by the German Saturday School Bristol. Martinstag...

Read More...

** After a stunning performance in the Rathaus in Hannover last summer with their Hannover partners, RISE Youth Dance welcomed their friends to Bristol this summer for another week of workshops, culminating in a series of dances on College Green as part of the Harbour Festival. Bristol-Hannover Council again funded an exploratory visit to Hannover in April by lead choreographers Helen Wilson and Luke Antysz, and RISE were subsequently successful in applications to both the UK-German Connection and this time also the Arts Council, in order to enable the visiting group to join them this year...

Read More...

After last year’s anniversary junketings at the Harbour Festival - gin boat and all - how could we follow that with our Hannover friends coming back to Bristol this year? In the event, our guests agreed in chair Robert Nicholls’s words: “There were no highlights – it was all fantastic!” This time arrivals and departures were varied in modes of transport, plane or car, and the airlines did not help with several cancellations disrupting travel plans but somehow everyone managed to reach their destinations eventually. The first day involved a trip to Cheddar Gorge, where everyone...

Read More...

** Thanks to our committee member Ian Turner, a variation on our Annual Dinner has taken place. Sunday lunch was arranged at No 5 The Beach in Clevedon for members of our association and also some of the members of the Clevedon Twinning group. Clevedon is twinned with four cities, one of which is Ettlingen in south Germany. In contrast to Bristol, the group all work together on events and visits.  The food was first class and of a varied selection.  We needed to walk it off afterwards. We had some lively discussions on various topics of interest to both our organisation, including...

Read More...

** A small number of members went to Oxford recently to see ‘Brecht on Love and War’, a multi-media set of musical performances, songs and presentations, with the Bauhaus Band and Singers, Marc Almond and young artistes from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.  The show, presented by Tom Kuhn and John Harle, took place in the Sheldonian Theatre of Oxford University, with its wonderful painted ceiling. John Harle The programme included songs from musicals by Brecht and Kurt Weill, as well as some readings of Brecht’s poems and songs, video art from Oxford art students, and Scenes...

Read More...

** Creative and professional writing students from the University of the West of England and members of the Bristol-Hannover exchange have taken part in a sharing memories event at City Hall, coordinated by Local Learning with the Bristol-Hannover Council. The stories spanned the many decades of the special relationship between the two cities. They were stories of long-lasting friendships, youthful exuberance and lives rebuilt after the devastation of war. What shone through all the memories – whatever decade they were from –  was the empathy and connection that the Bristol-Hannover...

Read More...

** The latest Bristol Hannover Council film projection was fascinating. It was shot in 1931 and produced in 1932 by Döring-Film-Werke. Although it was a silent film and in black and white it made an impressive impact. It was lost during the Second World War, eventually found in the GDR Film Archives and digitised in 2010-11. The film aimed to show how Hannover had developed and grown over time. The outline maps at the beginning were an effective way of showing how the small settlement on the banks of the Leine spread, gained and lost city walls as it grew and evolved into a thriving early...

Read More...