Travelling exhibition soon to reach Luxembourg
Published Date: June 3, 2010A press conference held yesterday marked the start of the countdown to the opening of the exhibition ‘Traditional Boats of Bangladesh’ in Luxembourg. The travelling exhibition has earlier been seen in the marine museums of Brest and Paris and is presently in Bretagne, but this will be the first time it shows in Luxembourg. You can visit it from the 22nd of July to the 19th of September in the Abtei Neumünster.
The exhibition is one in a row of travelling exhibitions held in Europe about the great heritage of boats in Bangladesh. The country has an over 5000 year old boat building tradition and boats are still being built like in the time of the Phoenicians. Being a land of rivers, Bangladesh also has the biggest inland fleet in the world. In spite of this, the tradition is now rapidly fading away as steel boats take over the rivers.
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| In picture, Roger Spautz (left), Runa Khan Marre and Marc Elvinger (right) |
The exhibition features live scale boats and items, but mainly consists of miniature boats. The miniature replicas are built by skilled carpenters in the same way as the full scale role models. If you visit the exhibition in the first ten days you will also be able to peek over three carpenters’ shoulders as they move their workplace into the exhibition. The exhibition will be held in two rooms in the Abtei Neumünster. In a third room Friendship International will inform about their activities. Furthermore the environmental organization Greenpeace will contribute with a photo exhibition.
Friendship International is a young aid organization founded in 2006. The idea is to create an international network to assist development projects and the head organization in Bangladesh. Other sister organizations exist in Great Britain, France and soon Germany. The head organization was first founded in Bangladesh in 1998 and in 2000 their first activities started. The first project was a floating hospital launched in the Northern parts of Bangladesh to help bring people healthcare in areas where there was no such infrastructure. An immediate success work has continued and now encompasses healthcare as well as education, sustainable economic development, disaster management and relief.
Friendship International Luxembourg especially supports a group of islands in the big Brahmaputra – Jamuna River with schools, vocational centers and more. The project is a pilot project that especially aims at achieving a sustainable development that work on the islands. A special section of this will be shown in the exhibition.
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