In the last week of September 2007 a group of students from Poland and Lithuania went for a study trip around south-eastern Poland. The Polish part of the group consisted of students of cultural animation specialization at Institute of Polish Culture, Warsaw University. The aim of the trip was to discover people, places and institutions important for culture of this particular region. The meetings had been planned around the theme of local culture animation but they became much more. It turned out that we set off on a track of lost multiculturality, memory and tradition which are being preserved not only by institutions but also village theatre groups and a collector and local history enthusiast based in the woods of Medynia Glogowska…

We visited:

• Ośrodek Brama Grodzka/Teatr NN (Lublin)
• Ośrodek Praktyk Teatralnych Gardzienice
• Stowarzyszenie Miasteczko (Chełm)
• Tarnogrodzki Dom Kultury
• Muzeum Etnograficzne w Tarnowie
• Malopolski Instytut Kultury

and

• village theatres in Hańsk, Zanowin, Bukowa
• Teatr Przedmieście in Łańcut

In all those places we learned the secrets of local enterprises and found out that cooperation, institutional support and information flow are among the most important ones. Just as passion and courage to set off to make one’s dreams come true. We are hoping that these meetings will become an inspirations for students who are bound to meet similar challenges in the future.

In addition to our main website http://www.laundryline.co.uk/ we have created a Facebook group for Laundry

Our Facebook page is intended to be a more informal place, where people can see and comment on the activities of Laundry and its members.

We invite everyone to have a look. 

The idea for the workshop came from the desire to find an element that remains a link between different generations of women of Gozdowo. Initially during this project I was planning to encourage the girls from the local middle school to record the lullabies performed by their mothers and grandmothers. However in reality my plans were not achievable, because the mothers were not willing to sing.

Eventually girls and boys who showed interest in participating in the project invited me into their homes. Then, with some persuasions, we managed to register (with the help of Martin Villau who was much more acquainted with the digital equipment) the songs that women from Gozdowo used to put their children to sleep with. Some of the songs were recorded in the households I visited during another project involving creating a map of Gozdowo’s emigrants.

Most of the songs I collected appeared repeatedly during the ten days of the project, but there were families who created their own tradition, like the family of the old lady from a nearby village where four generations of children used to fall asleep listening to songs about stranglers and rapists.

The second part of the project was based on creating an improvised recording studio (wholly accomplished by Jacek Sosnowski), in which we encouraged kids participating in the workshop and their friends to perform songs they liked.

At the end we made a compact disc out of all the collected tunes and gave a copy of it to all the people who contributed to the project.

The memory of this feeling connected with exploring a forrest, running away from pursuit of  rivals, looking for hidden riddles and arrows left by opposite team…

It is a smell of childhood, present in every memory and imagination. Dream of adventure.

The proposal of project which could be made by our young workshop participants was born in connection of this childish dream.

An idea was both simple and sophisticated: this action had to be done in unturned relation – by children and youth for us and for adults of Gozdowo. Also for other children.

It was a challange and adventure – how to help and encourage them,how to convince that it is possible for them to do something on their own.

Planning, organizing, setting rules, finding interesting places, marking up a route, advertising an action – our democratic process of preparing the game was not easy but fascinating and enlightening. For some of young organizators it was the first contact with this kind of problems and questions and the first ocassion to cope with it.

What it should be about? How we can involve adults – parents, teachers or shop-assistent from grocery? How to plan a route – not to easy but complicated and interesting enough? What kind of tasks should give the game?

First of all we decided that it would be in but also about Gozdowo. There was a map with some points marked – the task of each team was to reach every point and to carry out a task.

The game became a small project – it was created and realized by participants who became animators-begginers.

Each point turned out to be a space of small action – at Krystian’s place competitors had to design logo of Gozdowo, in the small forest, in Wiola’s control-point they wrote a legend of their town, in the other spots the vision of future in Gozdowo was created.

The joy was great – maybe first of all because it was a time of being together – grandparents with grandchildren, friends form school, animators form Warsaw and teenagers from grammar school.

And because it was the first own success, first own project made by our young friends!

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A film by Pamela Wells, realised with the kind assistance of Gozdowo Girls and Karolina Pluta. And thanks to Father Sebastian for the soundtrack! Premiered at the ‘Słuchając Gozdowa’ event 1 July, 2007.

We came to Gozdowo by the invitation of IKP as the representatives of VMU to contribute to the animation project, obtain practical skills and experience ourselves that cultural animation is. After some days observation we decided to take part in the project Stacja Gozdowo.

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A short guide to Gozdowo in English and Polish.
A film by Pamela Wells and Tomek Korzeniewski.
Premiered at the ‘Słuchając Gozdowa’ event 1 July, 2007.

Train Station Project 

The project done by Julia Biczysko, Asia Zięba and Agata Pietrzyk was focused on one particular point in Gozdowo’s map: the old train station that had long fallen out of use. We wanted to make this place alive again and learn how it was perceived by people who lived in Gozdowo. What made us even more interested in this place was its location - far from the town centre, transgressing the notions of usability and even propriety. 

We set out to work with children first, asking them to draw, cut and spray with paint stencils of trains and all things associated with it. Their works turned out to be an inspiration for us and became a basic idea of a poster promoting Train Station Project.

We placed three pieces of Plexiglass opposite three walls of the train station building. On each of them we made an outline of the building itself, so that one could see it in miniature. Three groups of people (different age groups) used our outlines as a background for their own drawings then. Thus we met three different ways of looking at the old train station.

 Apart from all that, our project became one of the elements of the field game when participants were asked to find a hidden sign and draw their own imaginary station on the Plexiglass.

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During our stay in Gozdowo, right after the workshops started and we were slowly getting to know all the youngster better, it turned out that a group of girls has been really looking forward to dance classes. We had organised such classes the year before during our project Guide my Future that had also been based in Gozdowo. When the girls found out that Jacek and I knew a few basic steps and figures, they almost forced us to run a short salsa 101.

The class took place for 5 days, everyday right after capoeira workshops. At first we had a room at the firestation at our disposal, then we moved to a presbytery. It was quite a challenge: we had to start teaching something that we weren’t so good at to start with. Soon was the question asked: what is the purpose of this class, what would be their input to the project, what would they change for the girls and for ourselves? They turned out to be the space for individual expression, a space in which we could relieve the tension gathered from other activities. They also became a great meeting space where we could talk in a totally different way, on the margins of the project, asking for impressions and encouraging to try other activities.

Despite a very loose structure of the class we managed to present a short choreography at the final event, giving us the satisfaction of having an actual result. For Jacek and myself the experience became an inspiration for thinking of dance as a medium of cultural animation enabling people to meet and act together in a more informal way.  

Gozdowo – this small village next to for 10 days Sierpc became the center of various activities. For many students it was the first time to get some animation experience. Some of them after this experience decided to continue this adventure. In Gozdowo both experienced animators and students at the same time created their own project. The open formula allowed everyone to participate in sombody’s else project. Our proposition was photo workshops for children and young people from Gozdowo. At our workshop photo cameras became a tool, that helped young people to tell stories about the places they live.

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