In November 2003, 8 students from Notodden visited Türi. We had a very good programme and got the chance to see Türi and Tallinn. The students lived the whole week in families. All of us are looking forward to see you here in Notodden in February.

Since Thursday last week more than twenty youths and some adults from Alytus have been exploring Telemark and partcipated in a field work in Notodden.

Yesterday the PIPE project class at Notodden upper secondary school was in charge of a political debate. All seven local parties were questionned, and the PIPE future charter (PIPEplan for Notodden) was the background for the meeting. The parties are commenting on the youths initiative and many suggestions have a support from the politicial leaders.

"Town planning is in fact very exciting" says Torgeir Slåtta, one of the young PIPE students in Notodden. Together with his fellow students he is participating in creating new plans for the "Bluestown".

The participants from Notodden at the youth conference in Kirkenes were interviewed in two of the local newspapers in Telemark some days after they returned from Finnmark.

The presentation by the youths in the municipal council in Notodden in May contained many proposals for improving the town. One was to improve existing playgrounds and to build new ones. The head of the administration had however originally proposed in his economic plan that the municipality would no longer be responsible for maintaining the playgrounds, which would likely lead to many being closed. But after the presentation he changed his mind and wanted to go with the youths' proposal. This was the subject of articles both in Telemarksavisa and Telen on the 4th of July.

On the 22nd of May youths presented their ideas to the municipal council. The following days, local newspapers contained several articles about this meeting.

In had Telen an article. In this article we could read that the students will stay in Lithuania for four days. There they will work in groups and look at Alytus. This work will be presented for local politicians and representatives from Alytus. The Norwegian student have earlier done the same in Notodden.

The local newspaper in Notodden, Telen, had 27th of June 2003 an article about the two Lithuanian students, Liudas Stanevicius and Marijus Surdokas.

Students from Telemark have recently visited Alytus. They participated in a common workshop between students and professionals where the aim was to create new ideas and visions for the development of Alytus town and region. In this article by Ingrid Elise Rekaa, you can read more about the experiences the students from Notodden in Telemark have from their visit to Alytus.

28. Mars left a group of students (and "grownups") from Notodden.
We were going to Alytus to help them make their town a more attractive place to live.
Most of the time we just had fun, and we had always something to do. We
went out every evening to bowl, go to a pub or dance. We also had an evening
when the Lithuanian students showed us their national costumes and we all danced
to their national music.

In Notodden municipality’s intern newspaper there was an article about PIPE in December 2002.

In the beginning of this year there was a debate going on in Telen, a local newspaper in Telemark, about whether Notodden should leave the PIPE project or not.

Today, March 12, the future workshop is undertaken in Notodden municipality in Telemark. About 90 people were present, mostly students, but also some experts and people from Notodden municipality and Telemark county administration.

Notodden is the target case area for the Telemark project. The town is known as the bluestown. In Notodden the project includes both entrepreneurship and community development. There is established some special contacts with Alytus in Lithuania. Torbjørn Frantzen (picture) is the co-ordinator in Telemark.