“Theatre shows us another world and highlights values we should not forget,” said Andrzej Seweryn on Thursday during a meeting with teachers and members of Lublin’s cultural community. The distinguished actor, director and educator, as well as Director of the Polish Theatre in Warsaw, was the special guest at the first meeting starting a series of “Education for Culture” networking events.
Launched at the Hans Christian Andersen Theatre in Lublin, the programme is one of the key programme areas of European Capital of Culture Lublin 2029. In the spirit of RE:UNION, the slogan of Lublin’s winning ECoC bid, our aim is to create a space where teachers, artists and cultural animators can get to know one another better and exchange ideas and experiences.
During the meeting, Andrzej Seweryn drew attention, among other things, to the role of culture and art in education. “Can art change someone’s life? I don’t know, but it certainly happens. Thought and beauty are incredibly powerful. These values cannot be destroyed with a PPSh submachine gun, a Kalashnikov or drones. You can destroy a house or someone’s life, but you cannot destroy love or loyalty,” the actor argued.
He also emphasised the special place theatre holds in this process. By taking audiences on a journey into another world, theatre speaks about issues that remain relevant regardless of the passage of time. “Good theatre always speaks about the present, even if it stages Antigone, written 2,500 years ago. If, in the play, a king wonders whether what is divine or what belongs to the state is more important, several societies around the world are grappling with precisely the same question today. Therefore, theatre highlights values we should not forget.”
Seweryn also recalled the most important teachers in his life. One of them was a historian Anna Radziwiłł, who later became Deputy Minister of Education. “She spoke about choosing the lesser evil. And that was a frighteningly realistic statement, because young people generally want to choose between good and evil. Yet even then I was being taught that things are more complicated than they seem,” he added.
The “Education for Culture” networking meeting was also an opportunity to learn more about the work of the Hans Christian Andersen Theatre in Lublin. Its representatives – Director Krzysztof Rzączyński, Agata Sakowicz and Małgorzata Kiliańska – spoke about the theatre’s activities.
It is also worth noting that the Lublin theatre is part of the Consortium – Union of Lublin Cultural Operators and, in accordance with Lublin’s ECoC 2029 bid book, is responsible, among other things, for the Kids’ Culture Lab (“Dziecięca eksperymentatornia”) programme strand, as well as for programme development and audience building for the new strategic municipal investment, the Children and Youth Arts Centre (Centrum Sztuki Dzieci i Młodzieży), which will become the future home of the Hans Christian Andersen Theatre.
The “Education for Culture” programme directly implements the objectives set out in Lublin’s ECoC 2029 bid book, which envisage introducing modern models of arts education in schools and providing systemic support for the development of competences among education and cultural-sector professionals.
Author: Tomasz Kowalewicz
Translated by Aleksandra Górecka
Proofread by Gabriela Niewadzi
