Worcester Twinning Association is awarded £10,000 of National Lottery funding

Worcester Twinning Association has been awarded a grant of £10,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) with which to carry out Worcester City Council’s decision to have a temporary twinning with the village of Gouzeaucourt in France.

In April 2013 the City Council agreed, as part of its commemoration of the centenary of the First World War, to undertake a temporary twinning with Gouzeaucourt, remembering Worcester’s ‘adoption’ of the village to help there in the aftermath of war.

Responsibility for organising the temporary twinning was passed by the Council to the Twinning Association who have decided to mark this commemoration by researching and mounting an exhibition about the relationship between Worcester and its ‘adopted’ village. There will also be a website accompanying the exhibition, telling the story of how Gouzeaucourt was on the front line or occupied for much of the war and detailing the help Worcester gave in the town’s post-war reconstruction.

The Twinning Association’s plans for an exhibition about the relationship between Worcester and Gouzeaucourt have received support from National Lottery players and they will now be able to develop this work.

Liz Smith, Chairman of Worcester Twinning Association, said: “We are delighted to have been awarded this funding of £10,000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund so that we can give our time to making this exhibition happen. We plan to mount the exhibition next summer (2017). We hope that people in Worcester and from around the county will find it interesting and that it will enable the city to remember and understand the sacrifice of those who lived on the front line in France and Worcester’s generosity in helping them to re-build.

“In the spirit of the twinning movement we will be sharing our work with visitors from Gouzeaucourt.”