Dorota Ogrodzka

For a long time, I have been trying to write a book called FEMALE CULTURE WORKERS. It will explore the experiences of people who work in the arts and culture sector, their unspoken stories and, more broadly, the sector’s landscape. Sometimes I get up at five in the morning to take a few moments to write before I start my commitments for the day. For some time now, however, I have realised that this simply does not work and that it is impossible to do this on such an irregular basis. My reflections have also led me to write a chapter about the need to stop and the opportunity to discuss the regime of overproduction and the grind. It’s hard to write about pausing whilst simultaneously being in a rush. As part of the residency, I want to experience a pause and gather material for a chapter on how to… pause. How can we treat turning points, when we reach the wall of our own resilience, strength and hope, as possible defining moments to change the way we work and the way the whole arts and culture industry functions? I want to take a break, get my thoughts out, write them down and invite people who work in culture to talk to me. I want to ask them about their experience of breaks, pauses and breakthroughs. About their sources of strength and wisdom in coming out of crisis.

I am an artist and an activist. I use interdisciplinary tools, although I work primarily in the performing arts, theatre and community arts. I am a theatre educator, director and playwright. I have collaborated with many theatres in Poland, producing performances or other artistic and educational projects. I facilitate creative and group processes. I design and lead playwriting workshops and artistic-social and activist-educational projects. I am the vice president of the Theatre Pedagogues’ Association, with which I work daily in Warsaw and collaborate with cultural institutions and organisations in various parts of the country and Europe. As part of international collaborations (including the Reshape project), I conceive tools and solutions for transforming the arts and culture sector.

I am also a researcher and for many years co-founded Kolektyw Terenowy, an arts research and training group working on the intersection of art, ethnography and cultural animation. I am the founder of the Theatre-Social Laboratory. I have been working at universities for almost twenty years. I did my PhD at the Institute of Polish Culture and still teach there, including co-creating the post-graduate programme Theatre Pedagogy. At the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology I teach courses on community arts and contemporary theatre. I also run workshops on cultural research methodology and writing and speaking about cultural research.

I have also been working at the Theatre Academy in Warsaw for two years. I am one of the curators of the Slot Art festival, which has been taking place in Lower Silesia for thirty years. I write, publish and invent new tools. I am a mentor and tutor local to leaders, creative groups and teams working in various areas of social life. I am a graduate of the School of Tutoring at the School of Leaders Foundation, the Drama Forum at the Theatre Institute, the School of Ecopoetics at the Institute of Reportage and the CoachWise course. I was an artistic scholarship holder of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the City of Warsaw. In my work I combine imagination and mindfulness, art and people, process orientation and research sensitivity, and the desire to create new tools for social change.