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Tag: Culture

More than culture: The UK–Poland Season as a test of relations in a post-Brexit Europe

Relations between Britain and Poland remain obscured by issues such as Brexit and foreign policy realignment. Nevertheless, the realm of cultural diplomacy can prove a suitable forum for maintaining and strengthening links outside of government actions.

September 9, 2025 - Zula Rabikowska

Repression and resilience: the voice of Belarusian culture

Since 2020 Belarusians have fled en masse from growing repressions inside the country. Civil society and independent culture are now only possible in exile. The stories of Belarusian artists and cultural activists illustrate the resilience and creativity of a community determined to preserve its identity and proceed aspiration for freedom.

Belarusian artists and cultural figures have found themselves increasingly targeted by a regime that views independent thought and creativity as threats to its control in recent years. As a result, the cultural sphere in Belarus has become one of the battlegrounds for the suppression of dissent. The government’s efforts to control and politicize culture have led to censorship, forced closures of cultural institutions, and the persecution of artists who challenge or fail to align with the state's ideological narratives. Yet despite these obstacles, Belarusian culture continues to evolve, with artists voicing their messages at the international level; integrating into a new environment; forming new communities and connections; and spreading the culture.

November 21, 2024 - Alena Hileuskaya

Repressions, wounds and blood. Anti-regime culture in Belarus

In Belarus, discrimination in the cultural sector has been shown to be both institutional and systemic, with the Belarusian PEN Club reporting that cultural life is the area where civil liberties are regressing most rapidly. At least 105 cultural figures have now been imprisoned in Belarus for their commitment to democratic ideals and freedom.

In Belarus, protest movements have always drawn strength from some societal undercurrents that may not be immediately visible to all people. This latent power resembles similar movements in other parts of Europe and the post-Soviet states. Historically speaking, despite the constraints of the Iron Curtain, the societies living in the socialist states were never completely isolated from global developments, including the protest culture of the 1960s. Thus, throughout the history of protest actions, we have witnessed such significant events as the 1965 demonstrations at the Red Square; the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial of 1966; the Prague Spring in 1968; the Solidarity movement in Poland; and the Autumn of Nations in 1989-1990 across Central and Eastern Europe.

November 21, 2024 - Magdalena Lachowicz

Nascent, destroyed, aspiring: three cinematic visions of Dushanbe

The past century has seen the Tajik capital Dushanbe change in many ways. As the city celebrates its first one hundred years at the country’s heart, it is worth looking back at the media that has encapsulated its many eras.

August 14, 2024 - Karolina Kluczewska

UKraine 2023: How Eurovision in Britain is promoting Ukraine

Ukraine’s victory at Eurovision last year was the first time a country engaged in full-scale war has won the competition. However, such circumstances have ultimately resulted in runners up Britain organising the event this May. How did this come about and how does the UK plan to promote Ukraine during this year’s Eurovision?

May 5, 2023 - Niall Gray

Ukraine’s defiance goes beyond the battlefield

Poetry may not have the power to stop Russian missile strikes but Ukraine’s literary festival season, which carried on in spite of the horrors of war, became a testament to the importance of defending culture during the invasion. After all, the Russians have been very clear that they do not recognise the Ukrainian identity.

In Chernivtsi, a small Western Ukrainian city located on the border with Romania, September begins with poetry. Artists from throughout Ukraine and all over the world have been gathering there for the past 13 years during the annual Meridian Czernowitz Festival. Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this year’s festival was different, and, in the words of Meridian’s chief editor Evgenia Lopata, “a small miracle”.

December 7, 2022 - Kate Tsurkan

Culture is an indivisible good: on the margins of “Ukrainians are calling for a cultural boycott of Russian artists. Is the world ready to listen?”

Many people have now called for an outright boycott of Russian culture, as if it bears some responsibility in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But such a radical move would only harm a new wave of Russian cultural figures attempting to challenge the essentialist understanding of the country’s values, as imposed by Kremlin’s propagandists.

August 4, 2022 - Joanna J. Matuszewska

Ukrainians are calling for a cultural boycott of Russian artists. Is the world ready to listen?

Politics and culture are inseparable. Many event organisers are now searching for a third option instead of a direct boycott of Russian attendees.

July 20, 2022 - Kate Tsurkan

A female voice from Sarajevo

In post-war Sarajevo a war is waged to win the future which had been taken away by the living ghosts of the past. The frontlines are nonetheless changing and now different people are pushed underground, stigmatised and treated as if they do not belong to the community. The ethnic and religious war has been replaced by a new culture war.

Some time ago, when the bloody Balkan war was still raging in Sarajevo, poet Izet Sarajlić, editor Čedo Kisić and professor Zdravko Grebo were explaining their world to me. None of them is alive anymore. Neither is Isak Samokovlija, a prominent Bosnian Jewish writer, whose stories took me to the most hidden corners of Sarajevo’s historical centre, Baščaršija, as well as the Grbavica and Bentbaša districts. I was listening to the stories of the writers and artists who had left Sarajevo, but who were still under its influence. They included Dževad Karahazan in Graz, Josip Osti in Ljubljana, Miljenko Jergović in Zagreb, and Nino Žalica in Amsterdam…

September 12, 2021 - Krzysztof Czyżewski

The living and the dead

A conversation with Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, a Polish poet, and Trupa Trupa, songwriter, vocalist and guitarist. Interviewer: Jacek Hajduk

JACEK HAJDUK: During the 2019 SXSW Music Festival you dedicated the performance of your group, Trupa Trupa, to the memory of the late Gdańsk mayor, Paweł Adamowicz. Let us then start with Gdańsk. How much of this city is with you today? And how was it before? Which faces of this multi-layered urban centre are close to your heart?

GRZEGORZ KWIATKOWSKI: Today, Gdańsk is a big part of me, unlike in the past. Back then I was more interested in self-isolating myself and creating a kind of enclave in one of its districts – Gdańsk Wrzeszcz. This actually is still my ideal, but now I also understand the impact that this city has on me and my poetry. This is mainly because of my family stories.

September 12, 2021 - Grzegorz Kwiatkowski Jacek Hajduk

COVID-19 is changing our lives, but not the old masters

An interview with Prof. Dr. Klaus Albrecht Schröder, the long serving director of the Albertina Museum in Vienna. Interviewers: Bartosz Panek and Jarosław Kociszewski.

July 19, 2021 - Bartosz Panek Jarosław Kociszewski Klaus Albrecht Schröder

Ukraine’s public diplomacy enters a new phase

A new milestone in Ukraine's public diplomacy began in late March when the foreign ministry approved, for the first time in history, a public diplomacy strategy. The document calls for efforts to form and promote a positive international image of Ukraine at a strategic level and defines the concept of public diplomacy, filling a conceptual void that had existed for many decades.

After Ukraine’s declaration of independence in 1991, public diplomacy in the official Ukrainian public and academic discourse was practically absent. Existing initiatives in this field were mostly isolated, lacked complexity, strategic vision and adequate financial support. For some time, the duties of public diplomacy were assigned to so-called cultural and information centres, which operated at foreign diplomatic missions. These centres were responsible for disseminating information about Ukraine abroad, acquainting foreign audiences with Ukrainian history and culture, and informing them about Ukraine's tourism opportunities and attractions.

June 23, 2021 - Nadiia Bureiko

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