Lord Mayor Belit Onay exchanges ideas with Hanoverian MPs

Oberbürgermeister Belit Onay, 15 Abgeordnete und die Leitung der Kulturhauptstadtbewerbung stehen auf der Treppe im Rathaus.

Thu, 09/03/2020 - 08:22

Lord Mayor Belit Onay exchanges ideas with Hanoverian MPs

To exchange ideas, Lord Mayor Belit Onay met with 15 Hanoverian members of the Landtag of Lower Saxony and Bundestag as well as the European Parliament this Wednesday evening (September 2nd). The main topic at a joint dinner was our application to become European Capital of Culture in 2025.

For Lord Mayor Onay, the previous bidding process was an important impetus for Hannover’s urban development: “A new, interdisciplinary collaboration has created a dynamic of mutual inspiration and networking that has created a spirit of optimism far beyond the cultural scene.” This creative energy has expanded to all areas of city life in order to "start discussions on major European issues such as mobility, social division, climate change and digitization from Hannover."

During the course of the evening, the guests enjoyed a Best Of of the artistic bidding line. The European Capital of Culture bidding team looked back at the first phase in a 30-minute presentation. It all started with the white poster, presented in June 2017, titled “Hannover has nothing”, which only revealed the sights and hotspots of Hannover with a UV lamp. The team around Melanie Botzki and Inga Samii had the surprising poetry slam appearance in Berlin in October 2018 performed again for this evening event by poetry slammer Erik Leichter, the reigning Hannoverian poetry slam city champion. The theatrical presentation of the motto "HERE NOW EVERYONE for Europe", the passionate appeal of the Briton Hannah Gibson for a united Europe as well as the artistic reading with the fictional story about Kurt Schwitters and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz from Hannover's 1st bid book was shown in a Best Of video compilation as well. The presentation of the 1st bid book, which was awarded with several design prizes and which the members of parliament were able to view, also aroused particular interest.

At the end of the meeting, Hannover showed why it is also UNESCO City of Music. Thomas Posth, as a representative of the artistic team of Hannover's European Capital of Culture bid, played with a quartet of his Orchester im Treppenhaus to one of his well-known "emergency concerts" and gave a foretaste of the second bidding phase.