Rural Europe on the move English_chapt1_6 | Page 65

In Loco - here in this place
OPPOSITE
4. Artur Gregório, with a memory tile of the Sustainable
Mystery Tour workshop in Algarve, Portugal
5. Marta Marcis and Uwe Kurzke at the Sustainable
Mystery Tour final gathering at ‘In Loco’
6. Alberto Melo and Maria Priscila Soares, founders of In Loco
“It was one of those moments
where you can feel like a European
whilst staying at home.”
Artur Gregório
THE SUSTAINABLE MYSTERY TOUR
‘The Magical Mystery Tour’ was an early hit and a film ‘candidate’ Baltic countries, Poland, the Czech
by The Beatles in the late 1960s, featuring people Republic and Hungary needed high diplomatic
travelling in a coach making unspecified magical effort. Austria and Italy, Germany and France were
adventures. Forum Synergies (at that time still easier before arriving at the concluding workshop
ENESD) borrowed the idea of visiting and gathering in the Sierra do Caldeirão, Algarve, Portugal. At each
the magic of bottom-up rural development stop of the tour, in the cities or in the countryside,
movements. the ‘travelling forum on the future of rural Europe’
Following a series of inspiring local workshops offered space to exchange ideas on rural policies,
from
May 1996 to October 1997, the team of ENESD
1 EU enlargement, and the involvement of citizens
gathered at Mas de Noguera near Valencia in Spain, in the various levels of democratic decision making.
to imagine and prepare such a tour of discovery Many of those meetings and conferences were
and animation throughout Europe, visiting the attended by national ministers, national and regional
places where the magic of sustainability had administrations and authorities.
appeared. The outcome was a plan of a tour from In November 1998, the exhibition arrived at
the far North East to the most South Western part the European Parliament and was opened by
of Europe, from Estonia to Portugal. the Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural
The tour comprised three pillars: local workshops Development Franz Fischler, who received
and public debates on the future of rural Europe ‘messages from the countryside’, prepared by the
with a view to the then planned reform of the local organisations and projects having hosted
Common Agricultural Policy of the EU called the Sustainable Mystery Tour. The tour was
‘Agenda 2000’; a travelling exhibition featuring supported by Fondation de France, the German
the places and projects which were then part Schweißfurth Stiftung, La Caixa Foundation and the
of the ENESD network; and finally a diary of the European Commission.
tour, gathering very personal ‘messages from the The impact of the Sustainable Mystery Tour on the
countryside’ of ordinary rural people, to be told to Agenda 2000 reform of the CAP may be difficult
regional, national and European decision makers to measure. It certainly was a magical adventure
during and following the Sustainable Mystery Tour. for those participating. And it laid the ground for
The messages were translated in four key travelling workshops as one of the most inspiring
languages and embedded in a European mosaic of methods having emerged in Forum Synergies and
sustainable development. The tour was a genuine our partners’ treasure of what we call ‘rural reality
adventure. Crossing borders between the then checks’.
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