News Archive
08/03/21Staedtepartnerlive 3 real 'live' cultural integration
The 3rd edition of Staedtepartnerlive broadcast on Sunday 7th March is a great success.
The sheer technical challenge in bringing together no less than three different locations in Schwäbisch Gmünd, two in Barnsley, England – 800 miles away and one in Szekesféhervár, Hungary – some 930 miles away would be enough to send most minds boggling and should not be underestimated. Not to mention the task of adding multilingual translation so everyone can understand and follow most of the ‘LIVE’ broadcast. Add to all that, the use of photographs, cooking demonstrations and ‘live’ musical performances, with the individual sound challenges that poses, the technical ‘guru’ must either have real talent or many, many sleepless nights wondering whether perhaps by chance, it will all work, fingers crossed….or both!
The bringing together of all their twin towns, as a way of keeping ‘in touch’ was an idea sparked as the second Covid peak struck and confined everyone to yet another lockdown.
Initially, the idea was to share news reports from each partner town, Antibes in France, Székesfehérvár in Hungary, Barnsley in England, Faenza in Italy and Schwäbisch Gmünd in Germany on how people were coping with the severity of mass hospitalisations and rising infection rates, and their life experiences generally under different levels of restrictions. This soon expanded into the more cheerful friendship and exchange, the sharing of tradition through art and culture and building real world social relationships, albeit digitally.
The monthly broadcast format now features one of their five partner towns amid News items from around the world, a musical item and includes a Quiz with a prize for listeners to solve.
This particular broadcast (Sunday 7th March) featured BSGTTS showcasing the ongoing development of Barnsley town centre, the planting of a Ginko Tree, a sign of peace and hope, a gift from the people of Gmünd now planted here in Barnsley and a tribute to Sir Tom Moore, Inspiration for the World.
Making their debut appearance for Barnsley was Cat and Claudy, members of Frumptarn Guggen Band, (who would normally be across in Gmünd for the International Guggen Festival held around this time every year) producing their own professionally performed contribution about the origins of Guggen Music and how Barnsley Frumptarn Guggen Band became one of, if not, the first in the UK. They went on to describe how the two bands, Frumptarn and Gmünder Gassafetza became firm friends and how Gmündian Claudy now resides in the Barnsley area. A truly wonderful story of real twinning!
The previous Quiz question (the answer to which I can now reveal) set the task to find a word that connected all the partner towns and sounded the same in all five languages, using one letter from each town name. Amongst the answers, interestingly were Nähe, meaning near or closeness, Vital, meaning vital and Alive, all correct, but the one they were looking for and winner of the first prize came from Family Monastory in Hungary, who correctly took the R from Szekesfehervar, E from Antibes, L from Bethlehem, A from Fienza and Y from Barnsley to form RELAY.
Relay 1 was launched by NASA in 1962 to take news signals from ground stations and then transmit them to other locations on the earth's surface.
A really good 'fit' you might say for the first quiz question.
The Ginko Tree featured by Barnsley in the broadcast is the topic of this month's (March) quiz poser!
Where in Gmünd is the brother of the Barnsley Ginko tree to be found?
The whole broadcast is done ‘LIVE’ and OK, things could and do go wrong along the way with connection difficulties and signal delays, some unfortunately you see for a second or two especially when connecting across countries, and some you don’t even know about. This is not the BBC, nor are there professional presenters, however it would be very remiss not to give a special mention to the person solving any technical difficulties before and during broadcasts, displaying pictures, controlling connections and the sound and vision ensuring a first class product for every viewer around the world.
"It's all down to my little box" he would say but .....
Clemens Weller, our technical guru, we thank you, you are a star !!!
You can imagine, it takes an unbelievable amount of hard work and committed effort to get these broadcasts together, this is real ‘live’ cultural integration, bringing communities beyond borders together.
If you did not join us ‘live’…… why not?
The broadcast is still available to view via this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrZhJCIPr4s
The next “staedtepartnerlive” is in planning, date to be confirmed soon.
