Projects

The Warsaw Observatory of Culture is carrying out a research project on how children and families from Belarus and Ukraine who experienced migration participate in culture. We explore how and why they enter the world of Warsaw’s culture, identify their needs and styles of participation, as well as barriers and challenges they face.

Every year, over 200 people graduate from art schools in Warsaw. To continue their artistic practice, they need a place to work, however, access to spaces and tools that would enable creative work is limited. New spaces to create art are becoming increasingly rare in Warsaw. That is why we at the Warsaw Observatory of Culture (WOK) are looking for solutions and new ways of thinking about the role of art studios–and artistic work–in the urban environment. In collaboration with the Puszka Foundation, we are running research and mentoring activities aimed at developing new ways of thinking about artists' studios and models of creative work, bringing together stakeholders and providing young artists with the knowledge they need to practice their art without restraints in Warsaw.

WOK has developed a new research approach to systematically measure the cultural participation of its population.

The Warsaw Observatory of Culture (WOK) launched a research project dedicated to the situation of parents working in creative professions. We are witnessing a paradigm shift for mother/father/parent-artistic individuals—from the historical exclusion of combining a career in the arts with caregiving responsibilities to an increasingly common need to function in both realms and to fulfil the role of practising artist on an equal footing with the role of a parent.

Since September 2023, Warsaw Observatory of Culture has been supporting a process of establishing Warsaw’s Pavilion of Dance. So far we were bringing together the Warsaw’s dance community, Bureau of Culture, and Museum of Modern Art to work out the terms of the open call for the pilot programming at the Pavilion and to discuss the needs for accommodating the building of Pavilion on the Vistula to the needs of dance communit. We were also fueling the dance community with knowledge during the workshops we organized.

The study of cultural education in Warsaw is a study of the city itself: its radically changing community; its shifts and uncertainties in the face of global challenges; as well as its local conditions and their impact on the lives of Warsaw’s residents. WOK presents the report Cultural Education in Research and Action, which concludes the second phase of our study on cultural education practices in Warsaw.