Keszthely Cultural Round Table

,,We believe that, just as no individual, no settlement can be successful on its own, relying only on its own strength; we need to think together and work together as a region. One of the most important benefits of the ECoC Year is that it has strengthened the cultural ties that already existed and, together with the towns and villages concerned, we have been able to show the true cultural diversity and strength of the region, which is attractive to many.  In addition, we are of course delighted to have been able to implement or expand high-quality programmes that we would not have been able to do on our own or in this form. In addition to the resources, cooperation and programmes, we have also gained a lot of inspiration and ideas thanks to the Keszthely Cultural Round Table, which was set up under the auspices of ECoC: with the involvement of all the major local players concerned, we have created a Cultural Round Table, which has been very successful, primarily for the development of a common urban strategy, but also for the implementation of individual projects and even programme elements. It is also a tribute to the work of the Round Table that, in the ECoC Year, we managed to attract and engage a wider than ever before community of interested people from the town and the region with unusual and new approaches to culture, and the visitors from further afield certainly took the good reputation of Keszthely further afield. As a result, for example, we held extraordinary Helikon Festivities, developed KeszthelyFest into a multi-day, multidisciplinary arts event, but also added several smaller-scale but equally important elements to the cultural offer of our town, such as the Cultural Courtyard programme series, the Artist in Residence of the Town programme, ECoC's smartbench or the Talking Towns - Stories of Keszthely project."