After a long day traveling and a nine hour wait at stansted airport we finally arrived in Torun late monday evening. Although tired from the days events we continued to explore the city. The city itself was quiet and seemed to lack the bars and social events that would be seen in areas around Cornwall, however we later discovered we were just looking in the wrong places. After further exploration we found a student bar not far from our hotel situated by the river. I thought this would be a good place to start talking to the young people of Torun and find out there experiences of the city's cultural events. Tired from the day i decided to go back the next night.
So the next day after a brief team meeting were able to see Torun in daylight and really appreciate the architecture and beauty of the place. We went to the contemporary art museam at 10 o'lock and on the walk there i was suprised to see the amount of posters and advertising for the European region of culture scheme. I didnt realise the scale of the project but there were posters everywhere. After looking around the Lucim lives on exhibition we were taken to the urban commune centre of culture in Koronowo. These people run country comon rooms and houses across the region and they help kids and adults in workshops to practice weaving, woodwork among other things. We were then treated to a group called the pineapples consisting off about 10 girls and a boy. They sang three songs for us and it was very impressive. Without the help of these centers the kids would find it hard to produce something with such professionalism, this is mainly due to the fact it is not taught to great extent in schools.
After this we went to Lucim. Upon our arrival we were met by the manager of there house and he greeted us by presenting the traditional bread and salt. Everyone was so excited that we were there and they laid on cake, beer and we were also treated to some traditional folk songs from the elder people of the village. The village of Lucim is so important because this is where an art movement started called Lucim 111. It caused some controversy when the group first appeared because there ideas clashed with their communist government. The wife of one of the original members joined us on our coach trip and she was passionate to say the least! There was a real sense of community in the village something that we might be lacking a bit off in Cornwall. The actual building was used for every aspect of village life, weddings, funerals, and partys. The children of the village where taking part in an artist workshop outside and we went to speak to them about what they were doing. All the kids were really friendly and happy to show us there work, which was very impressive! There were some older guys there as well probably aged about 19 but it proved very difficult to talk to them because of the language barrier. We then went back to the hotel and after dinner i went back to the student bar where i started to talk to some people from the university. I met Natellia who is studying chemistry and Mark who was studying maths. Both of them were not from Torun but loved the city both for its university and for the culture it provides, I told them about the European Region of Culture scheme and they seemed really interested in what it was all about. I managed to get some of there thoughts on mini disk so hopefully will upload them later!
print
PDF
