PISTE partners gathered on 15th and 16th December 2023 in Bebra for the last field visit to a partner municipality and for the organisation of an important Consort Meeting in view of the upcoming PISTE final event. The two-day event was opened in the beautifully renewed co-working space of the Bebra railway station by mayor of the municipality, Mr. Stefan Knoche, who was followed by four different presentations by representatives of the municipality and FH Erfurt about the local context and policies. In this way, PISTE partners could discover more broadly the historical development of Bebra and the crucial importance of its railway, as well as its long history of immigration, began in early 1900s with Belgian and Spanish railway workers and prosecuted in the 1970s and 1980s with the arrival of Turkish immigrants up to nowadays, when almost half of the local population has migration background and there are almost 100 different countries of origin among immigrants.
The first day continued with the field visit of the town, starting with the railway station museum, in which participants could really understand the town’s history as a railway town and a border town during Cold War period. Then, PISTE partners were received in the local Mosque by the Turkish Islamic Cultural Association, which run it and offered a wonderful lunch. In the afternoon, the visit went on at the memorial and exhibition “Resistance & democratic activism during WWII”, also created thanks to the public funding program Partnership for Democracy, and at the Bebra Syrian Orthodox Church. Finally, PISTE partners visited the youth centre Juze, discovering their work especially for what concerns youth care and street work.
The second day was dedicated to the Consortium Meeting. Partners discussed about the structure of the White Paper on the Participation of Immigrants in Small- and Medium-Sized Towns, which will be completed and published next month, and about the organisation of the final event of the project, which will be held in Brussels at the end of January. The last part of the meeting was used to exchange final results and impressions about policy experiments, which are all concluded or about to be concluded, among local policymakers and researchers involved in the project, pointing out strengths and weaknesses of each experience. This was a crucial meeting both because of the last field visit to a PISTE partner municipalities and for its importance in the organisation of the final efforts to conclude the project and we thus warmly thank our partner in Bebra for their flawless planning and great hospitality in their beautiful town.
