Szczecin 2016: Common Cultural Space

For many years associated mainly with tension and mistrust, the Polish-German border has always been of special attention in Europe. Those living nearby can observe how it is daily becoming less and less restrictive. Residents are free to move, settle, work and purchase goods on both sides of the border, which in fact retains only its administrative function today. Yet the border remains the dividing line between the Polish and German cultural policies and the public budgets financing them.

That is why the task of Szczecin as European Capital of Culture candidate is to stimulate the Common Cultural Space. Understood as an area of cross-border circuits of culture around Metropolitan Szczecin, and within the radius of its impact measured by the intensity and functionality of connections, it covers both Polish and German municipalities- from Greifswald to Kołobrzeg and from Świnoujście to Gorzów Wielkopolski. The impact of Szczecin can be felt across the Baltic Sea. The Common Cultural Space serves as a territory of common public opinion that comprehends common good. It is also as a way to prepare people for joint actions in the economic, social and cultural domains.

The awakening of the Common Cultural Space is a unique phenomenon for the Polish borderland viewed as a space of the long-term mixing of cultures, languages, traditions and customs that have never existed here before. A genuine borderland is coming to life at a unique, unprecedented rate, as a bottom-up process, without the involvement of authorities, governments or institutions. Communities are getting closer to one another very dynamically, faster than even the most optimistic plans and predictions had assumed. This is a genuine laboratory of binding Europe together.

This cross-border common cultural policy must be urgently launched within the Common Cultural Space. Methods of participatory planning, introducing rules of cross-border democracy to the domain of culture, will be applied.The Common Cultural Space is also about common cultural education, providing inhabitants of the borderland with tools to make their own informed decisions on how to participate in culture, inviting them to create such tools themselves.The projects to be implemented also focus on the process of minimizing the barriers.

Among the projects submitted by the SZCZECIN 2016 office and suitable to be implemented in the year celebrating the European Capital of Culture, there are 105 projects prepared by German partners and 116 prepared by Polish ones. The Common Cultural Space is becoming a reality.