Going slow leads the way into the future

Taking stock of how we want to live is a ‘lockdown lesson’ that many have learned in recent months. But for one Norfolk town, it has been a way of life for the past 15 years, as Clare Haylett explains.

- Clare Haylett

This has been the year of lockdown and restrictions. With so many of our freedoms removed, we’ve been forced to slow down and re-evaluate what’s important to us.

One town in our region has been setting the ‘slow’ agenda for the past 15 years, and reaping the rewards. Aylsham has been part of the global Cittaslow (pronounced ‘cheeta-slow’) movement since 2005. Literally translated as ‘slow town or city’, Cittaslow was set up in the 1990s by a group of Italians who wanted to combat the stresses of modern life.

So while we contemplate a radical fresh start for when the pandemic is all over, might Cittaslow provide a route map on how that could be achieved, and how we might organise ourselves very differently?

Patrick Prekopp, chairman of both Cittaslow Aylsham and Slow Food Aylsham, says that quarantine has been an opportunity to reassess and reprioritise what’s important to us.