Participating

Interview with Magdalena Sroka, Deputy Mayor of the City of Kraków for Culture and City Promotion

Kraków is faced with a need to cut spending in many areas including culture. What is a good recipe for troubled times?
We have no option – we must cut our spending. I see just one option: we must change the way we think and mobilise the potential of people and Kraków’s huge cultural resources.

How can a reduced budget be managed in this situation?
There’s no such thing as a single model of managing culture. Even a genius mathematician won’t come up with an algorithm to precisely include all possible aspects: conceptual, educational, creative, protecting heritage, promotion… Given the specific number of cultural institutions – cultural centres, museums, theatres, and so on – that are covered by the budget, should we treat them all equally? Should we take away the same amount from everyone? Or should we leave it uncut for those that have smaller rooms and can admit smaller audiences, viewers, visitors or participants, because by definition they make less money? Should culture be described by the number of “clients” visiting institutions, or rather by the quality it creates; the social value of their activities?

Let’s divide cultural institutions according to certain categories and functions: permanent cultural offer, education, heritage protection; to simplify, the permanent offer includes theatres and cultural centres, education – cultural centres and museums, while the latter are also concerned with protecting heritage. Under changing social conditions, these functions need to be redefined – and tested…

In your view, which areas have made the greatest progress in recent years?
Museums – that’s something we’ve done really well, and something that’s developing dynamically, largely thanks to Cracovian museum curators and historians. But I’m not just talking about municipal museums – you just have to look at the activities of the National Museum. I’m talking about growing self-awareness, the ability to find themselves in new realities. This environment already knows that museums must be something more than just a place we visit to look at collections; just as important are scientific and research activities, participation in broader heritage protection circles, as well as the ability to create emotion-filled stories. It’s also important to understand the fact that today it is impossible to focus the audience’s attention on works of art or historical buildings if they are not put into context which stirs emotions – whether through the arrangement of the exhibition, or events forming part of it or accompanying it: interactive, multidisciplinary, bordering on happenings…

We no longer have visitors: now we have participants; visitors want to become participants, and often co-creators. Kraków’s museums have risen well to the challenge: I’m thinking about the recently-opened branches of the Historical Museum of the City of Kraków – the Rynek Underground and the Schindler Museum – as well as MOCAK. In my view the next Cracovian event on a national scale will be the Home Army Museum.

What about other fields?
We have a stable situation in Kraków’s theatres; in case of Łaźnia Nowa, it’s a sensation on a national scale. It is a participatory theatre holding experimental activities, engaging the local community, and showing that they too can co-create art. Łaźnia has become a multidisciplinary centre – the club Kombinator, the magazine “Lodołamacz”, and all activities focused around the theatre strengthen its links with its environment.

But generally speaking, I’m concerned that our theatres, which have become expert at attracting audiences, have focused on their achievements: the Divine Comedy Festival shows that innovative, ambitious and avant-garde events rarely originate from our city. The excellent attendance doesn’t necessarily translate into new quality.

Kraków’s always been famed for its cultural centres…
Their activities are key for cultural education: held in different spheres, if targeted at various age groups they could continue developing, although it may be limited by realistic financial prospects. And yet it is those cultural centres that can make a real difference in forming a civic society and shaping the need for contact with culture. In this respect they are a priority, since there are groups of people in Kraków who rarely leave their neighbourhoods… There is a worrying trend we have observed: there are children in Kraków who have never been to the Main Market Square, unless they’ve been taken there on school trips. This means that cultural centres can be the only place of contact with culture; in turn, this puts important missions on the institutions to meet existing needs and create aspirations. And so it’s not just a case of responding to existing needs – such as foreign language courses – but also of developing a wide range of interests and creating civic attitudes and participation in social life. I see certain gaps here; tendencies to focusing on previous achievements.

Can you give me a positive example?
There’s the excellent – and inexpensive – project Gardens of Nowa Huta, implemented by the C.K. Norwid Cultural Centre, where new green areas created in city districts are developed with their inhabitants’active participation. This creates a tangible quality, bringing an additional aesthetic effect – and at the same time it uses the potential of local communities, which in turn encourages closer links within it. I also know positive examples of groups of volunteers gathering around everyday activities of cultural centres or their branches – this is frequently overlooked by some managers.

How can we place a vision of Kraków – city of high culture which is home to the unique strategy of 6 senses – within this landscape?
6 senses is more than just a strategy of promoting the city through culture; it’s also an excellent PR message transmitted to the rest of Poland, focusing attention on our city. Let me stress – we’re not promoting 6 senses as a brand; it’s more of a quality certificate awarded to Kraków’s most important festivals. And I’m feeling a certain longing, because the list of “six-sense” events should now be extended by others, ones the city has been supporting for years, whose brands are indisputable and which would simply strengthen the message. I won’t list them by name, because I intend to meet with their organisers soon, and I wouldn’t want them to find out this way. I’m quite sure we have a lot to offer one another.

And, generally, I think it’s worth stressing the partnerships with external bodies: Kraków Nights are an excellent example of municipal, national, non-governmental and private institutions combining their efforts to create a unique, enthusiastically received series of events. The situation is similar for the Joseph Conrad and Czesław Miłosz literary festivals – while they are coordinated and made into a coherent whole by the Krakow Festival Office, they are in fact created by numerous artistic circles in Kraków. This is also the case for many other festivals included in the 6 senses programme.

So what is the role of the Krakow Festival Office and its activities?
A common misunderstanding regarding KFO stems from it being regarded as yet another cultural institution in the city. And yet, following the above definition, this is not the case. KFO does not form a permanent – in the sense of available every day – cultural offer, nor does it concern itself majorly with cultural education; instead it organises prestigious festivals, and manages the InfoKraków information network and the activities of the Krakow Film Commission. It is an extremely efficient tool for promoting the city through its culture, as well as all the entirety of municipal culture.

Will tourists visiting Kraków in 2012 notice the cultural crisis?
Tourists visit InfoKraków points where professional employees provide them with information in several languages, where they can pick up the bilingual “Karnet” which introduces them to hundreds of events and lists the city’s museums – even if they concentrated only on visiting them, it would take several weeks – and recommends exceptional events unique to our city. They won’t sense a cultural crisis, simply because there is no crisis in Cracovian culture. There are just limited financial resources, which must be managed sensibly. And this is a problem for those managing culture to deal with, since they need to make mental shifts, structural changes, organisational changes, at times even legal changes to their institutions – not a problem for recipients or culture that is on offer. It certainly doesn’t reflect on the quality.