Bilbao wins the Eurocities 2023 award for its guided tours project on cultural diversity and migration Diversitours / Aniztasuna Tours

The intercultural community project of virtual and face-to-face guided tours Diversitours/Aniztasuna Tours received yesterday during the Brussels Urban Summit the eurocities 2023 network award in the category “Moving from global human mobility to local community cohesion”. The project aims to eradicate migration stereotypes by bringing participants closer to spaces and projects in three Bilbao neighbourhoods with a significant history of migration and intercultural coexistence. It is promoted by Bilbao City Council’s Area of Equality, Coexistence, Cooperation and Immigration, together with the social entities KOOP SF34 and Moviltik.

Diversitours / Aniztasuna Tours started in 2021 with a vital component of citizen participation since the design of contents and execution of the routes is carried out in collaboration with the neighbours of Bilbao La Vieja, San Francisco and Zabala, offering visitors the opportunity to have, over an hour and a half, exuberant experiences that do not appear on the city’s classic tourist circuits. Since its launch, there have been 27 tours, and 597 people have participated in them in total. More than 400 people took part in the virtual reality experience, including pupils from seven schools in the town.

In this edition, Bilbao was a finalist with the cities of Barcelona, Hamburg, The Hague, Ghent, Rzeszow, Leeds, London and Lublin, competing in the three categories of the awards, which recognise the achievements of the cities of the network in tackling Europe’s challenges in times of crisis.