Piscina & Wellness Barcelona projects to the world the social impact of pools

Can a swimming pool help transform a community, contribute to improving the health of the population, or provide spaces for relationships that are compatible with environmental balance? Undoubtedly, yes. The international swimming pool industry, which is meeting at the Piscina & Wellness Barcelona trade fair from today to Thursday, proposes to look at, understand, build, and use these aquatic infrastructures from a new perspective: the positive impact that swimming pools have on people’s individual and social well-being.

Institutions, entities, company managers, public administrations, NGOs, researchers, regulatory bodies, the media, and opinion leaders are the public that the pool industry invites to learn about the power of social transformation that aquatic facilities have. In this sense, the Pool Horizons summit is a pioneering event promoted by leading companies and organizations in the sector worldwide which, together with the Piscina & Wellness trade show, aims to promote debate on the role of swimming pools and their contribution to social and environmental challenges on a global scale.

This summit, which will take place on November 28 at the Gran Via venue as part of the Piscina & Wellness Barcelona, will feature a dozen international speakers, including the CEOs of Fluidra, Hayward and Pentair, Bruce Brooks, Kevin Holleran and Jerome Pedretti respectively, who will present the pool industry’s vision for meeting society’s new challenges, as well as inspiring experiences of community transformation thanks to aquatic installations carried out in different parts of the world.

“Best in class”, success stories

The program for this meeting, promoted by the Fira de Barcelona show, will include four “Best in class” success stories that will serve as examples to open the debate. The +POOL project, a floating pool in the shape of a cross that will allow the inhabitants of New York to bathe in the Hudson. The concept, supported by a growing citizens’ movement, is based on the fact that the walls of the installation naturally filter the water, helping to improve the quality and cleanliness of the river at the same time. Kara Meyer, CEO of +POOL, will explain the construction process and the uses to which the infrastructure will be put.

The objectives of the “Nager à Paris” initiative, an unprecedented plan to modernize the French capital’s public swimming pool park and provide urban, recreational and family bathing areas for all the city’s districts, will also be presented. This ambitious project, on the eve of the 2024 Olympic Games, is accompanied by more than a hundred measures with a social impact. It will be explained at length by Karim Ziady, commissioner for community sports at the Paris City Hall.

The South African project of shipping containers transformed into portable swimming centers to teach people, especially children and young people, to swim will also be presented. These infrastructures travel around different regions of South Africa, accompanied by an instructor who teaches the basic principles of staying afloat, avoiding drowning and swimming. Many of these containers end up permanently installed in schools and rural communities. The representative of the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) of South Africa. Andrew Ingram will present the results of this initiative. In addition, one of these containers will be installed at the fair so that visitors can see it for themselves and check out its equipment.

Finally, the social role that swimming pools played in ending racial segregation in America will be analyzed. This will be done by the professor of history at the University of Montana, Jeff Wiltse, author of numerous works on swimming pools in the United States and about the historical roots of contemporary racial disparities in swimming and drowning. Linked to this theme is the latest “Best in class” offered by Piscina & Wellness Barcelona. It is POOL, a multidisciplinary museum experience on display at Fairmount Water Works’ historic Kelly Pool in Philadelphia. This exhibit explores the history and contemporary implications of segregated swimming in the United States, as well as its connection to current drowning issues affecting black communities. The show’s creator, Victoria Prizzia, will share the goals of the project.

Innovation program

The Pool Horizons Summit is part of and gives visibility to the innovation program initiated by the Piscina & Wellness Barcelona show in 2021, which identifies wellness, health, and community as the three main purposes to which an innovative, sustainable, well-equipped, and well-maintained pool contributes. In this sense, the show contributes to projecting this new look with the “Best in class” with which it recognizes innovative aquatic spaces anywhere in the world that provide benefits from any of these three areas.

Wellness, understanding the pool as an irreplaceable area for leisure, entertainment and fun, especially for families, and as a space for relaxation and sensory pleasure. Health, for the benefits of swimming as a sport, physical activity for all ages, and therapeutic functionality for people with special needs, rehabilitation, and muscle strengthening. And community, as a place of collective meeting and relationship in diversity.

Piscina & Wellness Barcelona is the most international show in the swimming pool sector’s trade fair calendar. Organized by Fira de Barcelona, it’s bringing together more than 360 exhibitors from 30 countries to showcase their latest solutions in products and services for the design, construction and maintenance of swimming pools, spas, wellness areas and other aquatic facilities. It’s being held from 27th to 30th November at Fira Barcelona’s Gran Via venue.

Barcelona, 27th November 2023

Mª Gloria Dilluvio – Maria Dolors Herranz
Tel. +34 93 233 21 72 – 2541
gdilluvio@firabarcelona.com
mdherranz@firabarcelona.com

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