Crossborder exchange
The Blue Links project is based on crossborder exchange. This trip to the UK is then meant to feed some current reflections on the project :
'Animation of the canals and the canal- side areas: interaction between pleasure boating, urban planning and quality public areas'
It deals with learning, understanding, observing but also and above all initiating a real logic of crossborder exchange between elected representatives, technicians and waterway users.
It aims at contributing to the apparition of a common culture of historical waterways, that would allow for differences, but that would also be likely to develop a greater mobility of boats throughout the North West Europ waterway network.
As from 2008, the Deûle-Escaut link must be able to appeal boaters across the Channel, all the more that the British network needs a breather. The transfer of part of its activity on waterways of the continent meets a logic of sustainable development for British Waterways and other waterways in the UK. |
This is why Blue Links has its own stand (#A46) at the Diamond Jubilee National Festival & Boat Show of the Inland Waterways Association, which will be attended by tens of thousands of boaters and other users of waterways.
Financed on INTERREG IIIB and LMCU funds in the framework of the group of experts working on the project, this study trip will provide the project partners with the opportunity of discovering how the British have managed to restore and enhance their historical canals.
This should allow the partners to reconsider the role of waterways within a transborder area.
The Diamond Jubilee National Festival is to take place end August this year. The study trip will last two days.
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