A conference of cultural’s animators is taking place in Bialystok these days. Several dozen employees of the centers of culture and other organizations from different parts of Poland take part in it. And first of all from Podlasie.
Why was this particular region of Poland chosen to host the conference this year?
“The crisis at the border, the influx of a large number of emigrants – all this directs our attention to people who are looking for their identity, trying to protect it, trying to find their place. We are very interested in all this from the perspective of cultural animation. Something has to happen in the centers of culture, in libraries, in different places where culture is organized, so that these phenomena find their place there,” said Jacek Gralczyk, a member of the Forum Krakow organization.
Anatol Wap, acting director of the Center for Belarusian Culture in Bialystok, spoke about the state of affairs in the Belarusian national minority in Podlasie. In his opinion, this experience will be useful to the participants of the Forum Krakow conference and in other areas of Poland.
“Refugees from Belarus are carriers of the Belarusian culture, the Belarusian people, they are in all corners of Poland. In the open spaces where these cultural institutions operate there are national ethnic minorities. And our experience of Belarusians, our view on these matters, will certainly help them in their work, and they will be able to apply it to their needs,” Anatol Wap said.
