Past projects

A two-day invitation to the verbally tangled, the relationally curious, and the communally ambitious. Whether you move with your body, your words, or your eyebrows—you’re welcome. Open to all, including those outside the dance world and the young people who may well be the wisest in the room.

Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute, and the Warsaw Observatory of Culture (WOK) invite you to the event “Mobile Artists: How to Support Artists on the Move” on 25 April at 14:00. The event will take place in a hybrid format: on-site at the cinema hall of Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (Jazdów 2, Warsaw) and will be streamed live on YouTube. The event will be held in English. Admission is free.

To, że instytucje i podmioty kultury w Warszawie nie istnieją w próżni – jest oczywistym stwierdzeniem. Jednak zrozumienie krajobrazu, jaki tworzą oraz ekosystemu, w jakim funkcjonują: a więc własnych, wewnętrznych uwarunkowań oraz sieci relacji z innymi podmiotami, w jakich się znajdują – wymaga pilnej i wnikliwej analizy. Badanie ekosystemu warszawskiej kultury rzuca nowe światło na współpracę, tożsamość oraz potencjały instytucji kultury w mieście. W szerszym kontekście, badanie tworzy lepszy grunt do eksploracji pojęcia odporności instytucji kultury: bardziej systematycznego uchwycenia, czym jest odporność w sektorze kultury w Warszawie oraz rekomendacji, w których kierunkach powinna się ona rozwijać/wzmacniać. 

This year’s edition of the International Conference on Cultural Policy Research (ICCPR) will take place at the University of Warsaw from 19–23 August. Anna Galas-Kosil, Deputy Director of the Warsaw Observatory of Culture (WOK), will lead a dedicated panel discussion on how cultural policies can support artists with migration experience.

On Thursday, 6 June 2024, we had the pleasure of tasting chilled kombucha and sampling vegan delicacies at the Warsaw Observatory of Culture, all thanks to the annual meeting with the winners of the City of Warsaw's artistic scholarships, as well as directors and representatives of cultural institutions. We can humbly say that the invited guests had a great time listening to the achievements of the 55 scholarship holders.

This year, the second edition of the Women in Arts conference was organised in Brno, Czechia by the CO.LABS independent space. The key theme of this edition was Motherhood/Parenthood. WOK was represented by Anna Galas-Kosil.

At the end of 2023, the Warsaw Observatory of Culture became a member of the international information network supporting artistic and cultural mobility. Today, the network consists of 69 members from 23 countries. Its main objective is to support various stakeholders in the field of culture and arts and to promote mobility as a universal value of professional development.

We are taking the subject of scoliosis out of hospitals and doctors' surgeries and into the public space. The exhibition is the result of five months of meetings aimed at creating a space to share the experience of being a woman with scoliosis. During this participatory process, we met other women with the condition for the first time.

Today, culture is at a crossroads. On the one hand, old practices are still in use; on the other, new values supporting equality and diversity are being promoted. Cultural institutions are particular in that they are the sites of the struggle to change attitudes and ways of working. In a new series of WOK.casts entitled Being a Director, Olga Wysocka and Igor Stokfiszewski attempt to find out how the directors of Warsaw’s cultural institutions are handling change. What strategies do they use in the face of this challenge? What emotions does this provoke?

In Poland, artistic research has been developing for years on the margins of art and science institutions. Although these ephemeral practices are an inexhaustible source of new cognitive strategies, they have not yet found their own place in the cultural field. Their creators lack funding and institutional support, and their work has not received much critical or scholarly commentary that could help deepen our understanding of these practices.

The open-source movement and grassroots creators (makers) have revolutionised the way we think about the creation and distribution of knowledge, technology and products. But what does OPENNESS mean for the creative world today? On April 25th at 18:00, the Warsaw Observatory of Culture (WOK) will host the first event in the SPLOT Open series. The event is dedicated to the theme of OPENNESS and will explore initiatives that embody an open approach in various fields including science, culture, design, art, production, programming and social engagement.

How is the digital revolution changing reading practices? Which diegetic worlds are young people eager to visit and which are no longer accessible to them? The resting education research project, carried out in collaboration with the Culture Bureau of the capital city of Warsaw, provides an opportunity to take a closer look at these questions and juxtapose them with an interdisciplinary reflection on the reading competences of today's readers.

The slogan “It’s just chaos!” is more than the title of an exhibition presented at the WOK Lab space. Each of the exhibited works is an attempt to tell the story of the process of the emergence of an idea and the experience of young artists from the Młodzieżowa Koalicja Performatywna [Youth Performative Coalition].

As part of our partnership with Fundacja Stocznia, we are showing the exhibition Connections at WOK Lab. This exhibition is about connections. About combining art with activism, about creating conditions for collective action, but also about constructing narratives that help bridge different contexts. We believe in the importance of polyphony, but also in the search for common ground.

The paradigm of the artist-mother (and other parents) is changing from one that has historically excluded combining a career in the art world with caring responsibilities, to the increasingly common need to function in both worlds and to fulfil the role of a practising artist on an equal footing with that of a parent.

In late October, the WOK Lab hosted a presentation of Artwork by Florin Flueras. In it, Florin Flueras shifts the focus from the final product of art to the process of experiencing it and asks whether art that transcends consumption is possible. The show featured Eliza Trefas, Martina Piazzi and Florin Flueras.

From January 22nd to February 2nd, 2024, a cohort of 100 professionals, students, and teachers from Ukraine, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, and the UK converged in Warsaw and Lviv with a collective mission to create sustainable solutions addressing Ukraine’s urgent need for a sustainable recovery. Workshop activities took place daily at the WOK Lab space. The main project partners were Umeå University, Umeå School of Architecture, University of Limerick, and Kharkiv School of Architecture.

We invited artists with a migration or refugee experience to walk around Warsaw, to places that are important to them. Their stories, anecdotes and digressions, opinions and emotions are an attempt to answer the question again: how else could it be In Warsaw? Now ahead is a three-day methodological seminar.

The Warsaw Observatory of Culture is researching the local artistic community and its needs by observing the municipal infrastructure of art studios. The aim of the project is to increase the visibility of art studios and empower artists by highlighting the importance of these premises to the functioning of the city’s cultural scene.

List of Shortcomings is an interdisciplinary theatre project developed by a team of community artists from the Association of Theatre Educators and the Warsaw Observatory of Culture. Together we want to discuss culture as a working environment, the prevalence of precariat as a form of (un)employment in culture and the conditions, hierarchies and the discrepancies between stated values and their realisation.

On 7–9 September, a conference on the creation of the Belarusian Institute of Theatre (BIT) was held at WOK.

How can immigrant artistic communities be integrated into the structure of Warsaw's cultural institutions? Can art be used as a tool for integration? This is a summary of a series of presentations held as part of the Future of Culture Forum 2022. The event was organised by the Powszechny Theatre in cooperation with the Warsaw Observatory of Culture.

What do migrants in the capital do for a living? How does housing insecurity affect the lives of Varsovians? Do we feel responsible for the quality of the air in our city? These are just some of the questions we tried to answer during the national scientific conference Warsaw in Sociological Studies. The event, organised by the Warsaw Observatory of Culture, the Institute of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw and the Polish Sociological Association was held in late November.

At the Warsaw Observatory of Culture, we carefully monitor the contemporary artistic landscape and the mechanisms that condition it. We are interested in the changes that are currently taking place in this field.

The Warsaw Observatory of Culture was a partner of an international discussion panel during the 22nd edition of the Ciało/Umysł Festival. Our research interests are close to the topic of the state of the creative sector, taking into account the psychophysical well-being and working conditions of people working in the cultural sector, which, among other things, was the subject of the meeting on 7 October 2023.

In December 2022, the Warsaw Observatory of Culture (WOK) concluded a contest for the design of the institution’s visual identity. It was a process we wanted to run in a model-based way, and, as time has shown, the model works. We are sharing our knowledge and expertise to develop best practices in the cooperation between cultural institutions and graphic designers.

From 28 to 30 July, the WOK Lab was handed over to Ukrainian youth, who, under the supervision of Oksana Kolisnyk, a student of Social Arts at the University of Warsaw, who is the author of the exhibition and invites everyone to take part in the upcoming programme.

WOK Lab host the FSH1 platform for Belarusian photographers. On July 12, 2023, a networking meeting was held aimed at people from the Belarusian art community interested in contemporary photography.

On May 31, the Warsaw Observatory of Culture (WOK) held a meeting between the holders of the City of Warsaw scholarship with directors of cultural institutions. Its purpose was to encourage discussion on matters important to culture in Warsaw now and from a long-term perspective of 150 years. The experts from infuture.institute, whose report served as inspiration, estimated that adopting this long-term perspective is crucial for ensuring a positive future for our cities and culture, benefiting our children and grandchildren.

Warsaw Observatory of Culture takes part in an artistic residency programme for creators from Belarus and Ukraine, organised by the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute. As a host institution we provide care and support, we try to include the Resident in our networks and partnerships, as well as in the rhythm of the institution's daily work by giving her a chance to get to know how a public cultural institution in Poland functions.

The Warsaw Observatory of Culture (WOK) is the thematic partner of the 5th edition of the Municipal Scholarship Programme. The aim of the programme, which supports doctoral students from all over Poland, is to deepen our understanding of the processes and challenges facing the changing Warsaw and its inhabitants, and to use this knowledge in the development of municipal policies.

Experience the world of virtual reality and generative digital environments at the Warsaw Observatory of Culture (WOK) during the Reality Bender graduation project exhibition. The exhibition was feature the latest graduation projects from the 3D and Virtual Events Studio II, part of the Media Arts Department at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts.

A showcase of the work Secondary Archive: Ukrainian artists' sound statements was shown in the WOK's front window from 23 February until 5 March 2023. The installation could be seen and heard from 34/50 Marszałkowska Street.

The Warsaw Observatory of Culture is one of the members of the React! network of culture organisers.

On 17–28 March, WOK Lab hosted eighteen participants and four mentors for the curatorial and research activities of Territory in/out.

Institutions of culture worldwide have found themselves at a watershed moment. They can pursue their mission and realise their growth potential at a time of unprecedented accumulation of negative external factors, which we have not seen for many years. On top of the challenges related to the development of technology, climate change, armed conflicts, and subsequent waves of migration, we now have to deal with the tensions connected with the populist turn and, as a consequence, the change of priorities in cultural policy.

At the invitation of the Museum of Warsaw, the WOK project team developed and executed a pilot evaluation process of the production of the Museum's temporary exhibitions.