Twin Cities
Hull has formal links with seven cities across the world that it deems to call its twins. The list is a real mixed bag of places and I suppose they have all been chosen for a reason but some are much less obvious than others. The work of the great Hull-born William Wilberforce in bringing slavery to an end in Britain clearly explains why we would have such strong links with Freetown, Sierra Leone. With Rotterdam, we have the direct trade and passenger ferry routes to connect us. The cities are also of a similar size and have a shared historical heritage as major ports to give us something to bond over. For Reykjavik it may well have something to do with us getting all pally and forgiving after the conflicts and shenanigans during the Cod Wars in the ‘60s and ‘70s. “No mate, it’s fine. Honestly, it was all my fault.” Or “Enginn félagi, það er fínt. Heiðarlega, það var mér allt að kenna“ if you prefer.
Hull City Hall and Victoria Square.
But what about Chisinau (Moldova), Szczecin (Poland), Raleigh (South Carolina) and Niigata (Japan)? I suppose I could do a bit of research to find out why we‘d want to be mates with them, and one day I might, but for the time being it can remain an intriguing mystery.
All those cities are twinned with other places as well as with Hull (actually Freetown isn‘t, Hull is its only twin); ‘twin cities once removed‘ we can call them. And they are all twinned with even more places and those places are twinned with even more places...You get the idea. This project is about going to these cities, in the correct order of hierarchy.
