This weekend, Nova Gorica ~ Gorizia invite Europe to ‘Go Borderless’, as they launch their 2025 European Capital of Culture (ECoC) with a grand opening ceremony.
Slovenia (Nova Gorica) is the host of this year’s European title, together with their counterpart in Germany (Chemnitz). Italy’s Gorizia is working hand-in-hand with Nova Gorica, testing to the limits the possibilities of operating as a single, cross-country urban conurbation to deliver a fully cross-border European Capital of Culture programme.
Can Europe (the world) learn to “go borderless”?
GO! 2025 and GECT GO have been set up as complementary organisations, with a dedicated team in Slovenia, another one in Italy, and a commitment to deliver a single, unified cultural programme alongside a seamless communication strategy. The operational framework required to deliver this programme is putting to the test their core vision from the start: how to tackle the administrative fragmentation that continues to hinder the desire for “European unity”?
Communities that share the same streets or squares throughout European cities are often forced to navigate contradictory frameworks—a challenge that became glaringly evident during the Covid pandemic. This fragmentation is a fundamental issue central to Nova Gorica-Gorizia’s ECoC proposal that will test the resilience (and feasibility) of the programme’s objectives.
We will have a first taster of this complexity with the delivery of their ambitious, cross-border opening ceremony this weekend of 8-9 February 2025. I wish the artistic director, Neda Rusjan, all the best.
The main ambition for GO! 2025 is to ‘transcend boundaries’ and advance genuine cross-border strategies in communities previously torn by war and divided by administration.
I had the privilege to be part of the European selection panel that appointed Nova Gorica as ECoC’2025 back in 2020. Last November, I also worked with the GO! 2025 teams to test and expand their ambitions for a sustainable legacy that is feasible for their city, region – and adaptable to the rest of Europe.
This was their original ‘legacy roadmap’, as envisaged in their successful 2020 bid proposal.
I led the concluding session of skills2GO! Empowering Nova Gorica – Gorizia for ECoC 2025, a capacity-building programme managed by the Italian Fondazione Scuola dei beni e delle attività culturali. During this session, involving both the Slovenian and Italian teams behind GO! 2025, we discussed:
- Can we overcome borders?
- Can we find alternatives to the administrative fragmentation of places & peoples?
- Is Europe ready to support greater and more meaningful collaborations across national state divides?
- Is the aspiration to go borderless getting more or less feasible in 2025?
- What do artists propose as sustainable creative solutions?
I look forward to the Opening Ceremony this weekend and to the messages that this very ambitious and brave cross-border team are putting together. I also look forward to their excellent cultural programme and wish them all the best getting heard and generating and European wide and global conversation.
#EuropeanCapitalofCulture #Ecoc2025 #goBorderless #Go2025