Festival of World Cultures „Window onto the world”
www.festiwalkulturswiata.pl

The idea appeared together with the Managing Director of BSCC, Larry Okey Ugwu, and it was first brought into life in September 2005. The greatest and the most influential BSCC festival - Window onto the World - is a space for artists of different cultures to meet the Tricity audience, a festival of international fusion whose primary aim is to promote tolerance, mutual respect, interest in "otherness" and in all the remote and still not easily understandable phenomena.

“Dialogue” is, basically, a key term to the whole festival - all activities: concerts, workshops, meetings, presentations, film screenings and various interdisciplinary projects are aimed at stimulating interaction. Our objective for the festival is to amaze the audience to the very limits by confronting different cultures and by juxtaposing dissimilar genres and forms.

Our efforts have been appreciated by the European Union - "Window onto the World" was included in Polish celebration of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue in 2008.

Every year the festival includes, in its final part, in October, a debate "Window onto the World". It is this debate that, by means of direct, intensive meetings with experts, scientists, intellectuals, travelers, and journalists, helps to discuss in greater detail the issues raised during the festival. It inspires not only the hearts but also the minds of its participants. The varied issues discussed so far include:

• “Poles-Russians –Mutual Relations”;
• “An encounter” as one of the leitmotifs in the artistic work of Ryszard Kapuściński and, at the same time, a metaphor, which helps to look at the reporter's work from literary, sociological, anthropological, journalistic and a reader’s points of view;
• The problem of assimilation of people who are alien due to cultural or social differences and who want to, however, retain their identities.

Get to know more - read the descriptions and programmes of former editions of the Festival:
1st Festival of World Cultures "Window onto the World" 2005
2nd Festival of World Cultures "Window onto the World" 2006
3rd Festival of World Cultures "Window onto the World" 2007
4th Festival of World Cultures "Window onto the World" 2008 [European Year of Intercultural Dialogue]
6th Festival of World Cultures "Window onto the World" 2010
7th Festival of World Cultures "Window onto the World" 2011 [within the programme of the Polish Presidency in EU]

Festival of Music Inspired by Folklore „Sounds of the North”
- www.dzwiekipolnocy.pl
- takes place every two years during summer

The festival has existed longer than the BSCC itself. It was first organized 30 years ago by the Provincial Culture Centre as a review of Kashubian folklore groups. The transformation of PCC into the BSCC turned out to be a turning point in the formula of the festival, which has been gaining momentum. For a few years now it has been known as the “Sounds of the North” festival and has won the interest of artists from Sweden, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Greenland, Ireland, Russia, Poland, and such ‘exotic’ nations as Buryats, Yakuts, Karelians, Mordvins, Tuvins, Eskimo or  Chukchi people.

Every two years “Sounds of the North” for a few summer evenings enchant the audience with most outstanding fusions of tradition and modernity, presenting “genuine” folk artists and professional musicians inspired by traditional music, its atmosphere and unusual variety of instruments. ‘Inspiration’ is an essential term for understanding what the festival is – we invite artists who employ traditional sounds to combine them with our contemporary music experience, to create new extraordinary melodies that would give the tradition a new dimension and a new artistic life.

Subsequent editions of “Sounds of the North” bring improvements – now it is not only music that concerns us. We want to acquaint young audience with traditional dances of the North through a series of workshops and dance shows that would prove their unusual charm, present a multitude of meanings that we hardly recognize. This is also to show how great fun it is to dance polka or oberek. Moreover, during the festival we present regions, often very exotic, where the artists come from. There are also theatre performances connected with the thematic sphere of the festival.

One-minute Film and Video Festival “The One Minutes”
www.jednominutowki.pl

We did not have to ponder for very long – after a meeting in The One Minute Foundation in Amsterdam in May 2006 and a discussion about the idea of “one-minutes”, in June we started an all-Poland contest for movies exactly “60 seconds long”, and in November, at the world meeting of TOM an animation by Polish authors won a first prize in its category.  

Since then our interest in one-minutes has continued – the festival was organized to promote young Polish artists who find the short video form best to convey their artistic experiment and vision. At the same time the festival is a great chance to promote their works and meet the audience. Those are the opportunities The One Minutes festival gives.

Every year The One Minutes displays are presented in cinemas, clubs, at universities of Poland, but they also appear at foreign festivals and in short films reviews accompanying art exhibitions all around the world (e.g. in Beijing in the summer of 2008 within World One Minute Beijing).

Midsummer Eve Celebration

The shortest night in the year has always been a magnificent opportunity for celebration – we started in 1995 by opening a series of midsummer night’s concerts in St. John’s church. In the last couple of years BSCC together with the Baltic Opera and the Chaplaincy of Artists have organized Midsummer Night’s Celebrations.

Operas and concerts of the highest rate are offered by the Baltic Opera every year, the Chaplaincy of Artistic Circles invites the participants for Midsummer Night’s mass, while the BSCC prepares a wide variety of midsummer night’s concerts of the most outstanding Polish artists such as Marek Grechuta, Stanisław Soyka, Ewa Bem, Urszula Dudziak and Maria Peszek or Dorota Miśkiewicz.

Streetwaves
- takes place each year in May

For the first time the festival was organised in 2008 in cooperation with the Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Arts - since that Streetwaves has changed, grown and developed.
For one weekend in May, the city is taken over by artists. Music and art penetrate the city tissue in places rarely visited by concerts and hardly prepared for such an invasion of exhibitions and performances. Music resonates in streets, parks, SKM-trains platforms and at the doorsteps of Gdańsk’s historic tenement houses. We put life into different areas of  Gdańsk to show that art exhibitions can take place in private apartments as well. Thus, as it flourishes in the flats and squares in the neighbourhood, art enters the lives of people who have not noticed it before, making them actively participate in these events.

Metropolis is OKEY!

United efforts of artists from Gdańsk, Sopot and Gdynia. Accumulated power of music, dance, theatre and literature. The best clubs in the Tricity, dozens of concerts, meetings, performances of independent dance theatres – the festival exists not only to promote the notion of ‘metropolis’, but, above all, also to promote the joy of cooperation and all its positive energy. For a few December days, somewhere between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, local music-theatre spheres combine their impressive potential: afternoons, evenings and nights become the territory of artists. Every day another city of the metropolis becomes a host for around fifteen performers. The festival does not establish any fixed genre boundaries, does not classify artists – we are liberal enough to make jazz meet reggae, to confront experimental music with sung poetry, or indie rock with ska. It is here that artistic energy matters more than anything else – this positive energy is easily shared by the artists and the audience.  

Action "Plug in! Culturally!"
www.wlaczsie.eu

This project activates, encourages, invites and facilitates encounters with what is broadly understood as culture. It was started in July 2008 in cooperation with A Kuku Sztuka Society, insistently aiming at our primary objective concerning our vision of the cities we live in: we want them to be alive –not in summer only. We attempt to stimulate in people the sense of curiosity, the joy of exploring culture, mutual friendliness, the awareness of the place of our existence. We believe that efforts of all the organizers of cultural events in the region (including the owners of clubs, restaurants, cafes, and also the local authorities, universities, and media) can result in creating space conducive to easy exploration of cultural phenomena.
The aim of the project is also to unite all of us – the activists of the Tricity cultural life – because only by means of cooperation and mutual support can we achieve what we have embarked on. With this particular provision “Plug in! Culturally!” is an open project of metropolitan character, uniting people in their work around a common aim of all the participants of the event.
         
This project activates, encourages, invites and facilitates encounters with what is broadly understood as culture. It was started in July 2008 in cooperation with A Kuku Sztuka Society, insistently aiming at our primary objective concerning our vision of the cities we live in: we want them to be alive –not in summer only. We attempt to stimulate in people the sense of curiosity, the joy of exploring culture, mutual friendliness, the awareness of the place of our existence. We believe that efforts of all the organizers of cultural events in the region (including the owners of clubs, restaurants, cafes, and also the local authorities, universities, and media) can result in creating space conducive to easy exploration of cultural phenomena.

The aim of the project is also to unite all of us – the activists of the Tricity cultural life – because only by means of cooperation and mutual support can we achieve what we have embarked on. With this particular provision “Plug in! Culturally!” is an open project of metropolitan character, uniting people in their work around a common aim of all the participants of the event.

Baltic Meetings of Illustrators
- take place every year in autumn

It's a very important moment for children literature in Poland and many other countries round the world -  it gains more and more interest not only from the side of authors themselves, but also parents, pedagogues, artists, cultural operators and publishers, who do a lot to publish it more beautiful than ever. There are book fairs focused on children literature, cultural events promoting  the idea of a child spending time with a book designed for it, there are competitions for illustrators, prizes for publishers - everything to set the children literature on the right, very high place in the general world of books. The Meetings have been created in 2006, when the situation of  children literature hadn't been that uplifting. We created them to show to the adults that a book can easily become children’s friend and to present works of those adults who illustrate, design and write books for kids.  We're very happy to see the changes and to be a part of the force that brought them, nevertheless our work is still not done - the project is a meeting-spot  for illustrators, authors, publishers, educators etc. from different countries who have the unique opportunity to share good practises, exchange experiences and - through exhibitions and numerous presentations - get aquainted with the ideas of their colleagues.

The formula of the Meetings is wide. We invite the most influential Baltic Sea illustrators to hold workshops for young Gdansk-based artists, to present their works, take part – together with other experts – in meetings and discussions open for techers, tutors, artists, publishers.
The audience of the Meetings can also get aquainted with the current propositions of different publishing houses presenting books for children.

We also try not to forget about children themselves – they are invited to take part in arts workshops.
For a wider audience BSCC prepares one-off actions – exhibitions, concerts, multimedia shows etc.


Get to know more - read the descriptions and programmes of former editions of the Meetings:
3rd Baltic Meetings of Illustrators (2008) [leitmotiv: Trolles, gnomes and hobgoblins]
4th Baltic Meetings of Illustrators (2009) [leitmotiv: illustrations of Józef Wilkoń]
5th Baltic Meetings of Illustrators (2010) [leitmotiv: illustrations of Bohdan Butenko]

A Writer and His Translators
- takes place every two years in autumn

During the session we meet those who let literature live fuller and wider, those who open it for another readers. The meeting offers an exquisite possibility of exchanging experiences concerning translation, but also let a wider audience meet those whose role in a general discussion about literature is often marginalised.

Apart of session addressed to a wider audience the project accompanies workshops held by great translators like Anders Bodegard or Adam Pomorski. The workshops are designed for the students of different philologies, future translators.

Benefit of a Fine Man
- takes place a few times a year

Every few months we invite people who bound their lives with the Tri-City, but whose talent is known in the whole Poland, sometimes even the whole world.
On benefits we have already met such artists as Przemek Dyakowski (musician), Jacek Staniszewski (graphic designer and musician), Lucyna Legut (actress and writer), Leon Dziemaszkiewicz (dancer, choreographer and performer), Paweł Konjo Konnak (poet and artist), Mirosław Baka (actor), Robert Brylewski (musician).