Mayor Nakada, officials and dignitaries
Monday 4 August 2003
Mayor Nakada, officials and dignitaries. Greetings and thank you
for the wonderful welcome to your city we have had so far.
I am sure Mayor Nakada will appreciate and understand me when
I say it is a special pleasure to pay a visit such as this, that
will lift our eyes from our day to day duties to look squarely
into the face of our mutual history as sister cities.
This is my first visit to Kurashiki, a city that has special value
and status with the people and city of Christchurch. I said in
Christchurch this year when I opened our new Art Gallery that even
as a Mayor, it is rare to feel the hand of history on your shoulder.
That was such a day - so too is today.
This is again one of those days when we are reminded that ultimately
we are all merely custodians of the past, present and future
for our cities - when we get to look past the daily demands of
our roles to look instead at where our cities have been, are
now and are hopefully going in the future.
Mayor Nakada and I jointly share the responsibility of celebrating
the fact that our sister city links are 30 years old this year.
We are also both aware that against the backdrop of world instability
that has been a mark of all our lives, such ties as
ours, that effectively build peace and friendship, are all the
more valuable.
Both our cities have chosen the path of engagement and openness
with the rest of the world. Both have forged links of culture,
commerce, sport and friendship that have grown stronger and deeper
with each passing year.
It is a journey of mutual discovery, that we have also taken with
other cities, but the path was laid first with your city.
The value of such ties as this increase with the passing of time.
The world at large has become no more peaceful or
settled in the intervening years since we set out on our mutual
journey of discovery as sister cities.
Some parts of the planet have progressed further toward peace
and prosperity, others have slipped back into the abyss of poverty
and war.
It is well worth noting today that nations where cities have forged
sister city links elsewhere, tend to be the countries that have
moved ahead culturally, on a material level, and also toward that
true prosperity which is a prosperity not just of pocket, but of
spirit.
Both Christchurch and Kurashiki share the signs of this prosperity
of spirit and the sense of healthy engagement with the rest of
the world that it brings.
In the world of the arts, the current examples would be the sculptors
we are exchanging between us. Earlier this year one of our sculptors,
Doug Neil, won your sixth open sculpture competition with his work
the "Pillars of Wisdom."
He also managed to bring together most of our sister cities in
the project. Doug was born in Seattle, got the stone from
Adelaide, carved it in Christchurch and then shipped it to Kurashiki!
Later this year you will be hosting another of our leading sculptors,
Graham Bennett. I understand that Graham will be with you for between
four to six weeks around November, working and also teaching at
Kake University.
Next year your sculptor, Wataru Hamasaka, will visit us as the
Artist in Residence at our Christchurch Arts Centre. He too will
be teaching our students during his visit.
As we all know, there are many other direct links and exchanges
between our two cities. Collectively, these add up to a shared
body of experience that gives us a firm foundation in the future
of what, the world at large acknowledges, will be the Pacific
Century.
What our cities have done together already is to be brave enough
to acknowledge that we are all students in this school of building
a new sense of global community.
We have chosen to do this by a literal face to face, person to
person approach. It is a decision that I think history, and its
sometimes heavy hand, will mark in our favour.
I am delighted to be here today and to greet the city of Kurashiki
on behalf of the city of Christchurch.
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