STREFA WOLNOSŁOWA is an initiative of people involved in theater, literature, dance, music and other activities in the areas of culture and art. We aim to organize artistic, cultural and educational activities aimed at intercultural and intergenerational dialogue. Engaging refugees, migrants in Poland, we carry out activities on the border of art and social intervention, addressing current problems in the country, Europe and the world. We support people who are excluded or at risk of marginalization. We carry out projects aimed at involving migrants and refugees in creative activity, multicultural education, discovering and telling refugee stories and deepening social awareness of the phenomenon of migration, refugees, human rights and their violation.
We have been active for almost ten years. In 2012 we took up topics that had not yet been spoken about. We brought out what our society has pushed to the margins of feeling: refugees, inequality, lack of acceptance, discrimination against minorities. Since then we have been active regularly – in Warsaw and other cities, but also abroad. Our group is still growing and our projects are expanding.
We have carried out international art and research initiatives: “The City Ghettos of Today“, “Migrating Theater,” “The History Atlas Under Construction” or “Beyond Theater“, where we coordinated the cooperation of more than 20 organizations and institutions dealing with the same issues we do – in different European countries. We’ve led theater-reportage workshops in Iran, Uruguay, and Palestine. Together with Chlebem i Solą we developed a uchodźcy.info portal. We created over 30 cultural-artistic projects and 27 performances, whose direct creators are people of different cultural and religious backgrounds, from various social groups and of different ages.
Our artistic actions are participatory and are the result of many months of work of workshop groups, involving each time about 50-60 artists from different countries. They have been shown in Warsaw, Poznan, Gdansk, Ostroleka, Berlin, Bologna, Paris. Participants of our music workshops founded Sound in Space Orchestra.
Since 2015 we have been cooperating with Teatr Powszechny, we jointly run the cultural educational and workshop space Stół Powszechny, we realize the project “Social Dramaturgies” and establish international collaborations.
In 2018 we initiated the Open Institute program – a space for young artists from different disciplines and cultural animators of different cultural backgrounds interested in creative work with refugee and migrant communities. From 2020, the Open Institute is realized in cooperation with Krytyka Polityczna as part of the newly established Social Institution of Culture – Jasna 10. Warsaw Luminary of Krytyka Polityczna.
In 2021, we will launch migrart.waw.pl, an online platform for migrant artists living in Warsaw.
The design and implementation of the website was made possible thanks to funding from the Active Citizens – National Fund program, financed by the European Economic Area Financial Mechanism.