Creative Waves Slavic webinar – May 7th 2022
On May 7th 2022 the project partners within the project Creative Waves: Baltic Sisterhood for Change invited artists and experts involved in the project to the first joint meeting at Zoom.
Until now, creative women, during the workshops, have met with a local partner. In May, we wanted to see them all and, in an informal atmosphere, share our experiences, impressions and conclusions from the project activities so far. We encouraged our participants to consider whether the Creative Waves project:
- Helped build new relationships with a wider range of creative women
- Contributed to improving your well-being and increasing self-confidence
- Built additional creativity and the possibility of wider promotion of what you do
This webinar and meeting was the first joint meeting of the creative women participants and as Polish was either their mother tongue or was known to them the event was held in Polish.
Iwona Preis – Intercult Productions
leader of the project – made the introduction to the project and the webinar. She presented the main goals and objectives of the Creative Waves project and suggested issues that should be addressed during the webinar, such as:
- if during the CW workshops(or in their hobby/work) women creatives used recycled materials or local products, thus adding to the implementation of the European Green Deal
- if women creatives do feel related to the Baltic Sea Region and balticness;
- if women creatives addressed local cultural heritage in their activities or have drawn from its resources.
Some of the key issues from the activities held in Sweden:
- some of the women creatives participating in the project had already cooperated within the Perform Art foundation, others have joined as the result of the project – this gave the participants feeling of togetherness, support while creating joint strength
- one of the women creatives used felt to create jewellery objects
- Perform Art has been invited to the Polish Embassy on the May national holidays to present their members’ artistic products thus providing broader promotion and recognition
- in some of the creations traditional folk elements from the South of Poland (Podhale) have been merged with Swedish folk elements
- digital tools have been used to produce some of the artistic objects and the need to learn those tools and use them more broadly has been discussed.
On behalf of the Pomorskie partner (Baltic Sea Culture Centre in Gdańsk)
activities held in Kwidzyn by Kwidzyńskie Centrum Kultury (Kwidzyn Culture Centre) were presented.
In Pomorskie two traditional ethnic areas and their artistic creations are most popular: Kashuby and Kociewie. The third one – Powiśle, with its white embroidery traditions is not well known, yet. That is why the BSCC involved creative women from this area. As the result of the project creative women from Kwidzyn ( Powiśle):
- promote white embroidery as part of Powiśle cultural heritage
- gather more systemic information on the Powiśle heritage to make this cultural heritage better known
- create a set of white embroidery patterns used in Powiśle to save this part of cultural heritage and base on it in further work
- transform Powiśle emboidery to the digital sphere by creating a special application
- establish a group of creative women who, participating in the workshops, develop their skills and spend time together in a creative way.
Some of the key issues from the Pomorskie part of the project:
- The CW project allowed to seriously speed up the previously planned activities and made some of them possible
- Workshops continued by KCK twice a month outside the project
- One more round of embroidery workshops – masterclass to be organised by BSCC on 17 May in Gdansk – integrating Powisle embroidery with the Ukrainian one (two work leaders: Katarzyna Magierowska and Natalia Kovalyshyna)
- Clothing and other objects gain new life thanks to the embroidery application – upcycling
- Presentation of all the results of the project planned for June.
A group of independent activist women from Kaliningrad Oblast
has been subcontracted to implement the project in Kaliningrad Oblast.
The women with background in sociology, city activism, environment protection and education, gender equality, botanic, culture management and modern art have been involved in the activities.
The following workshops and activities have been organized within the project:
- events to make target group and citizens interested in regional culture, intangible Baltic heritage (traditional cuisine, weaving, embroidery, gathering herbs, gardening, etc.), storytelling, bringing together traditions and cultural activities with contemporary social needs and expectations and innovative, digital tools.
Some of the main conclusions:
- participants consider those meetings, information exchange and learning process as important and useful, they are interested in continuing the process
. - participants express the need to develop skills of two types: technological (e.g. learning algorithms to use social media more effectively, create and develop individual brands) and conceptual (how to link history and traditional crafts with contemporary world and situation, given locality, its natural, historical and cultural heritage, how to redefine practices and heritage. This need is deeply rooted in a specific history of Kaliningrad Oblast)
. - the need to work with younger generations (youth and children) has been stressed – to combine creative life and activities with having children and to make up for the lost link between the grandparents and children in the form of working mothers; to involve children from dysfunctional families in creative activities
. - cultural heritage in Kaliningrad Oblast is not that obvious – it is important to define with which heritage historically to work with and base on;
In this project the proposal is to work with noninstitutionalised heritage. Pay attention to links with a given locality through natural materials/resources such as clay, plants, technologies of being in touch with nature (e.g. in gastronomy) or with environment/landscape (creating, preserving environment/landscape).
The potential of digital tools is very big. The participants of Pomorskie emphasised how the project was an eye-opener for them in this respect and how determined they are to use them from now on in their activities.
After the presentations free discussion followed:
- Workshops and cooperation have helped to gain confidence, to get out into the world and present the individual achievements, even sell artistic objects
- Contacts and relations have been established to be stronger in further activities and pursue
- A Facebook group will be created to allow for direct contact of all the creative women and project partners involved.
The webinar was prepared by Krystyna Wróblewska – Euroregion Baltic
Check CW project partners’ webpages and social media for more information:
