A group of individuals, with diverse skills and experience, descended
on Gozdowo in June to both enjoy the hospitality of Dom Wiktorscy and engage with local people. Gozdowo is a village of around 1000 inhabitants near to Płock and Sierpc.
Cultural institutions, as understood in a cosmopolitan context such as Warsaw, do not exist here in the same way. There is the school, the church, the shop, the fire station, the park, the library.
Thus one route to cultural animation leads us to the library, in just one room in between the park and the shop. There is a tremendous rainstorm, the drains are overflowing, the wind ruins our umbrellas, the 3 day bike trip organised by Father Sebastian has to be cancelled. We seek refuge from the elements in the library. Here we meet a man who has been working in Ireland for over a year now. He doesn’t like the food there. They don’t know how to cook, he says, the potatoes there - terrible! not fit to feed to pigs! - and then they keep giving us Indian food. He says he lost nearly 30 kilos. It;s clear his clothes are falling off him. We ask him if he missed his family and friends, but he says what he really missed was reading books in Polish. He found a library in Marlow, near Cork, where they had 12 books in Polish. They were all romances, rubbish really, but he read them all twice. The most popular books in Gozdowo are Harry Potter, followed by authors Danielle Steele and Nora Roberts. And so, in the library, out of the rain, we begin to collect local ‘talents’ to put into a community scrapbook. And a conversation begins, ideas and words which thread outwards to touch other projects and actions.
The projects undertaken are wide-ranging and ambitious, and perhaps there are too many conflicting demands on the people and resources available, yet something is achieved. This is, after all, intended to be an experiential project, an ‘incubator’ from which the organisers and participants draw knowledge. It should not be perfect. People shift their thinking from endlessly discussing problems to recognising the challenges in undertaking this work, and then discover the value of improvision. For example, impromptu workshops with comics and film editing prove valuable and popular. Field games and capoeira draw many participants, but how to move from simply providing an activity - fun and diversionary - towards a more meaningful experience? In observing the groups at work and play, I gather useful material, comments and reflections for the forthcoming guide to cultural animation that IKP will produce in 2008.
Cultural Animation Tip: the more challenging projects may prove to have the most interesting results - Gozdowo TV, the abandoned railway station; and the simpler engagements may prove the most fruitful - listening to people’s stories or the collection of lullabies…
Some results (apart from a useful learning experience for students): a community scrapbook will be compiled from the work and a copy lodged in the library in Gozdowo; a young group of teenagers will meet to plan a film and writing project. Here are some images from the time in Gozdowo.
