The Debrief

This is the last Debrief from The First News at the Polish Press Agency. As you may or may not know, TFN is set to close its doors to the public, with this podcast along with it. Before I say goodbye, some statistics! Along with this episode, we have a grand total of 197 episodes of The Debrief over a span just exceeding four years, with a total of over 17,300 downloads at the end of January 2024. And where are you all? Well, the majority of you are in Poland, but also in the USA, UK, Sweden, Germany, Canada and Australia. Plus many more… I would like to thank the team at TFN for their support, and who knows, maybe the Debrief will return in one way or another. Also my thanks to you dear listeners for tuning in over the years. Many thanks for listening and do take care of yourselves. Do usłyszenia! John Beauchamp

In this episode of The Debrief we take a look at the like and times of Jerzy Sosnkowski, brother of the illustrious general Kazimierz Sosnkowski. A new book about Sosnokowski shows how we was an accomplised architect, illustrator and artist, as well as a fiction writer and magazine editor. Yet despite this, he has remained out of public discourse, perhaps overshadowed by his brother, General Kazimierz Sosnkowski. Why is this? In this episode of The Debrief, John Beauchamp speaks to Dariusz Błaszczyk, the author of a new book on Jerzy Sosnkowski.

Thanks to the power of the internet meme, Polish has risen to the ranks of near legendary status for being obscenely difficult. But one Polish language teacher has set her sights on Instagram to make learning Polish that little bit easier. In this episode, John Beauchamp speaks to Julia Pilarska-Ciołek, the mastermind behind PlaPla Polish on Instagram and her school of Polish for foreigners.

We talk to cultural anthropologist and activist Ewa Chomicka from the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews. How do museums stay relevant? How can participatory methods actually enrich a museum’s narrative? One such project is a voluntary choir which was set up by the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which lasted for almost 10 years. What else can museums do to remain relevant and maintain social dialogue? Host John Beauchamp speaks to Ewa Chomicka for this last episode of 2023.

In this episode, we hear from the head of the Praga Museum about what it means to be from this slightly rough around the edges, yet vibrant and often overlooked district of Warsaw. John Beauchamp speaks to Katarzyna Kuzko-Zwierz about the Praga branch of the Museum of Warsaw about its new exhibition on exceptional women from the “right bank” of Warsaw. Kasia Kuzko also explains how the museum engages with local communities, providing a space for creativity and social cohesion. More details from the museum can be found here and on their Facebook page here.

In this episode of The Debrief, we take a look at digital accessibility in the social sphere, especially culture and the arts. Host John Beauchamp speaks to Maja Drabczyk, the head of the Centrum Cyfrowe, a digital foundation which advocates for better accessibility, public engagement and openness in the digital world. More information may be found here.

In the latest Debrief, we’re down in Kraków meeting a very special artist who has made a name for herself in creating the most colourful and inventive ecological protests across Poland and Europe. Join John Beauchamp as he visits Cecylia Malik at home in Kraków, a hive of activity where art and social activism collide. We speak about her ongoing major ecological happening, Sisters of the River, and how art can play a role in raising environmental awareness. In the above picture, Cecylia Malik shows the boat symbolising the Vistula and her tributaries. Below, the river skirt Cecylia mentions in the interview.

The golden era of Polish comic books started in the 1960s. Today its popularity has reached momentum with a whole array of titles being translated to foreign languages. The Comic Book Museum, the first such institution in Poland, is now taking shape in Kraków. It started operations in 2021 in a temporary space consisting of a small gallery and research room filled with books on comic art, historic comics and artefacts related to comic heroes. Its members have organised comic book exhibitions, including a major retrospective held at the National Museum in Kraków in 2018. Host John Beauchamp meets Artur Wabik, a visual artist specialising in murals and graffiti. Wabik is a comic book collector, curator and occasionally also a comic script writer. Since 2020 he has been a board member of the Comic Books Museum Foundation, whose collection includes 40,000 items related to the history of comic books in Poland. You can check out our TFN article on the museum here. Follow Comic Book Museum Facebook page to learn more on prospective exhibitions, workshops, meetings with comic artists and writers, and other events.

For this Debrief Extra we’re on a journey through photographic history at an exhibition entitled “Lithuania. Two Centuries of Photography”. From old, yellowish photos from the 19th century to the brand new digital projects. From the times when Lithuania belonged to the Russian Tsarist empire to the modern independent state. We speak to Nikodem Szczygłowski while visiting the exhibition, which is on at the International Cultural Centre in Kraków until 29 October 2023. More info can be found here.

A new report published by Warsaw’s Kozminski University shows that women in Polish higher education institutions are having a tough time breaking through to higher academic posts. Host John Beauchamp speaks to the author of the report, Adjunct Professor Dr Anna Górska from Department of the Human Resource Management at Kozminski University. Górska learnt about the working conditions for female researchers from Poland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Croatia and Romania. It emerged that from the perspective of female researchers, meritocracy at universities is virtually non-existent and women are constantly subjected to discrimination. More about Dr Anna Górska may be found here.

For this episode of The Debrief, we are in Venice for the European Cultural Heritage Summit. At the summit, John Beauchamp catches up with Agata Wąsowska-Pawlik, director of the International Cultural Centre in Kraków. With the bells ringing across Piazza San Marco in the heart of Venice, we discuss the latest edition of Herito, the ICC’s quarterly magazine, as well as the role the institution plays within Europa Nostra, an umbrella organisation which connects NGOs across the continent on the protection of cultural heritage. You can also check out more on the European Heritage Hubs by checking out this episode of The Debrief, as well as this article from The First News on the Wit Stwosz altarpiece.

In this episode of The Debrief, John Beauchamp speaks to Dr Łukasz Bertram, a researcher who has just published a book on the history of Polish communists. Bertram writes that before 1989, the study of the communist movement was an area reserved for historians closely associated with the Polish United Workers’ Party. Neither they nor their political overseers were interested in going too deep into that history for obvious reasons. After 1989, there has also been a debate on how far to go when looking at the histories of prominent Polish communists. But no matter which way you look at it, there’s no escaping the fact that they existed and held sway over the country for decades. More about Łukasz bertram may be found here.

Justyna Kisielewicz is a Polish artist who is taking the world by storm through her novel ways of social critique. Justyna has been in the US for almost 10 years now, and was originally found by a gallery in California through her Instagram account – talk about luck! So just how do you become an internationally acclaimed artist with just a pocket full of cash and a plane ticket? Well, being friends with a lawyer helps… sometimes! Host John Beauchamp is in the studio with Justyna Kisielewicz.

In this episode of The Debrief, we get the inside details on the new Polish History Museum due to open in September 2023. The Polish History Museum is to show the country’s over-1000 year history in an old Tsarist fortress, the Citadel in northern Warsaw. What was once a symbol of Russian domination – numerous Poles were executed here by the Tsarist authorities – is now set to house a museum of Poland’s statehood. Host John Beauchamp is joined by Dr Michał Przeperski from the Polish History Museum. Links history portalPolish History MuseumWarsaw Citadel

Coming up in this episode, we talk to Dr. Katarzyna Jagodzińska, an academic based in Kraków, about new ways of presenting museum collections as well as the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub. The Kraków Heritage Hub is part of Europa Nostra, a pan-European organisation devoted to the protection of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. You can find out more about the Kraków Toy Museum here. Host John Beauchamp speaks to Dr. Katarzyna Jagodzińska from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

War-time trauma and direct realism are the keys to a new retrospective of Polish painter Andrzej Wróblewski on at the National Museum in Lublin. Andrzej Wróblewski is regarded as one of the most outstanding 20th century Polish painters. He died at the age of 29 in 1957 in a mountaineering incident in the Tatras, but his legacy has prompted numerous artists to continue exploring Wróblewski’s themes. The exhibition presents a cross-section of Wróblewski’s work: from early abstract paintings, through the “Chauffeurs” and “Executions” cycles, to his late works, often done on paper, which are “delicate studies of everyday life, inscribed in the settling and existential mood of the thaw period”. Host John Beauchamp speaks to curator Marcin Lachowski from the National Museum in Lublin.

In this edition of the podcast, we are in Poland’s Mazury lake district to visit the Borussia Foundation – and we aren’t talking football… While the region has been within Poland’s borders since 1945, much of the area constituted East Prussia before the war, including the city of Allenstein, or what is now Olsztyn, where we are for this episode. So what does this chequered history mean for the region now? Host John Beauchamp visits the Borussia Foundation at the Mendelsohn House to talk about the region’s Prussian history and heritage with Ewa Romanowska and Alicja Kulik.

In this episode of The Debrief, we meet radio historian Dr Urszula Doliwa from the University of Warmia and Mazury. The history of pirate radio in Poland is slightly different to the stories many know about the famous pirate stations of the 1960s and 70s such as Radio Caroline. Here, pirate radio was more a fight for free speech than looking for the latest music trends… Host John Beauchamp is in Olsztyn at the radio studios of the Journalism Institute at the University of Warmia and Mazury, where he meets Dr Urszula Doliwa, the author of “Pirate Waves” to talk about the emergence – and disappearance – of pirate radio stations in Poland.

Wilno, Vilnius, Vilne 1918–1948. One city – many stories is the title of an ongoing exhibition throughout the summer of 2023 on the tempestuous time of the early 20 century in what is now Lithaunia’s capital. The exhibition is on at the National Museum in Kraków until September, and is curated by the museum’s director Andrzej Szczerski along with Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, who joins host John Beauchamp for this episode on the line from Vilnius.

Anyone who’s been to Poland and to Warsaw in particular, has probably seen the massive palm tree that sits in the middle of Rondo de Gaulle’a in the capital’s downtown. The artist behind the project, Joanna Rajkowska, is now back with another urban sculpture on the newly refurbished Five Corner Square in the heart of Warsaw. The sound you can hear is that of a song thrush’s heartbeat inside its egg, a blue marvel of nature. The egg has a name: it is “Hatchling. Song Thrush”. It measures a staggering 3 metres long and is over 2 metres tall as it is wide. John Beauchamp braves the summer heat and meets up with Joanna Rajkowska and architect Michał Kempiński by the sculpture in downtown Warsaw.