History
After the formation of the Whitstable Twinning Association in 1983, the first partnership was set up four years later. It was entirely appropriate that it should be with a town in Germany because the original concept of Twinning was to help repair relations after the Second World War. Borken, in Westphalia, had been badly damaged by allied bombing but a friendly relationship with its people soon developed and today the Whitstable-Borken link is the strongest of any between towns in the UK and Germany. Indeed, the relationship is so close that many people in Borken actually subscribe to and are members of WTA as well as their own association.
Meanwhile, separate groups of people in Whitstable and Dainville, in northern France, had been developing ties. The Whitstable-Dainville group later became a part of WTA.
The second town to become a partner with Whitstable was Albertslund (near Copenhagen). The formal signing took place in 1995. Five years later a link was formed with Říčany, a town near Prague in the Czech Republic. In the same year (2000) Whitstable staged an International Millennium Music Festival and a year after that the town welcomed two hundred young people to an International Youth Camp.
New links with towns on mainland Europe came about as a result of those towns already having their own links. It was rather like becoming a part of a chain letter. In 2003 Mölndal, near Gothenburg, was added, followed in 2007 by Grabow, in the former East Germany. The same year WTA also celebrated twenty years of twinning with Borken. In 2008 there was a further large celebration for the 25th anniversary of the formation of WTA.
