The Creative Waves partners summarised the effects of the activities in reports designed to show the benefits of the project and what the project highlights, how it can support the needs of the target groups.
As a reminder: the Euroregion Baltic, the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre in Gdansk and the Estonian Centre for Women's Studies and Resources ENUT, led by Intercult Productions from Sweden, jointly implemented the project Creative Waves - Baltic Sisterhood for Change.
The Baltic Sea Cultural Centre in Gdańsk hosted the final event of this project in September.
SISTERHOOD - an untranslatable word! - is it true?
This slogan has accompanied the project's creators from the very beginning. The project was set up by a group of women from the Baltic Sea region. It was developed to support women's creative and social activities, making it easier for them to find their way in the digital world. The project helped the participating women to build a network, become more entrepreneurial and made it easier for them to present their activities online.
The word sisterhood is a keyword that we can translate as 'sisterhood' and was added to the Polish Wikipedia on 16 September this year, and is indeed a very contemporary definition. It is a new and creative trend of collaboration.
STRONG, VISIONARY AND ACTIVIST WOMEN
"We were fortunate that both “Creative Waves” project as a whole and the September series of meetings were co-created by wonderful women. Experts in various fields, craftswomen, organisers, participants in workshop activities.... Without them, this project would have not made sense. We are immensely grateful to each of the experts and participants for their contribution, for sharing their knowledge and experience" - participants say
Here is an important link that we recommend you read and watch!
We will publish all activity reports soon!
CREATIVE WAVES - how was the work of partners looked like
Find out how was the work of the Creative Waves partners looked like, a project aimed at supporting socially vulnerable groups, looked like. Whether they are in fact vulnerable, find out what good a home-based artist can do. Popularizing folk embroidery in everyday clothing and household items is their specialty.
The project “Creative Waves – Baltic Sisterhood for Change”, a cooperation between Intercult from Sweden, Euroregion Baltic and Baltic Sea Cultural Centre from Poland, Estonian Women’s Studies and Resource Centre (ENUT), and activists from Kaliningrad Oblast, has come to an end. With this project, we empowered women in the Baltic Sea Region by meeting traditional crafts, local traditions and customs etc. with the digital modern world and its demands for change.
The project final powerful event was in Gdansk, 25 – 27 September in Baltic Sea Cultural Centre and partially online. “Talks to Empower” was a three-day series of meetings and accompanying events: presentations, shows and workshops that took place at the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre in Gdańsk (we encouraged you to participate here). The programme was amazingly rich with lectures, workshops and panels from international experts – inspiring women.
The event kicked-off in Miasto Gdańsk with some amazingly inspiring warm-up micro-workshops, shows & discussion with artists and craftswomen from Pomorskie, Województwo Warmińsko Mazurskie and Sweden.
Was discussed female entrepreneurship and the importance of building supportive environments. The project has built a sense of identity and belonging, and it is hoped that this is the beginning of a larger movement to empower women in local communities and the Baltic Sea region more broadly!
During the "Talks to Empower" with guests from four countries in the Baltic Region, discussions included women's entrepreneurship and the importance of building supportive communities. The guests focused on the practical aspects of turning passion into a profession, and considered how to use "sisterhood," empathy and solidarity to strengthen society. Traditionally women's activities (e.g., embroidery, jewelry making, herbalism) and their role in community building will serve as a starting point for future meetings.
There is a chance for the similar projects in the future!
CREATIVE WAVES, project's final conference, 25-27.09.2022, Gdańsk
Is this the end of cooperation of active women? Will they all come back and delve into their world after the end of the activities? The creators of this good enterprise hope not, there is still a lot to show, discuss and work out together. But it all depends on inspiration, on their own and others' needs to fulfill their own dreams and help others fulfill theirs. All this will be served by the final conference, which is titled:
TALKS TO EMPOWER. STRONG, VISIONARY, ACTIVIST WOMEN & CRAFTS
Where and when can you come or sign up?
September 25-27, 2022
Nadbałtyckie Centrum Kultury in Gdańsku - participation is free of charge
please be sure you register to blocks indicated in the programme (details below)
14.00–18.00 “Make or Buy: Crafts on Display” – afternoon with crafts(and)women
18.00-19.30 “How Passion Has Changed My Life?” – discussion with craftswomen
September 26th (Monday)
Morning session (10.00-13.00) will be held in English (for the audience in the BSCC interpretation into Polish will be available). The session will be streamed online (available only in English, on Intercult’s FB https://fb.me/e/26rEMT4VZ ).
Participation is free of charge, but please be sure you register:
10.00-10.30 "Design Thinking – Tools to Create and Implement New Solutions in the Context of Traditional Craft" – presentation by Dorota Madej (online presence)
10.30-11.30 “Digital Craftswomen Academy” – short overview by creators of Oplotki.pl followed by a Q&A session
11.30-11.45 Coffee break
11.45-13.00 “Women Empowerment Through Entrepreneurship” – panel discussion using fashion as an example
17.00-19.00 “Powiśle Region and Ukraine Embroidered” – workshops vol. 2
The event is held as a final part of the international project “Creative Waves – Baltic Sisterhood for Change”.
Project partners: Baltic Sea Cultural Centre in Gdańsk (Poland), Euroregion Baltic, Estonian Women Studies and Research Centre ENUT (Estonia), and in the first half of the project Team of Women Activists from Kaliningrad Region (Russian Federation).
Project Leader: Intercult Productions (Sweden).
The project is co-financed by the Council of the Baltic Sea States Project Support Facility.
Funded by the CBSS Project Support Facility
Creative Waves - project effects
Creative Waves - Baltic Sisterhood for Change supports the creative and social activity of women, making it easier for them to find their place in the digital world. The project reaches female artists and activists operating in centers distant from the centers, supports building a network of connections between them and makes it easier for them to present their activities on the Internet. All this to strengthen the role of women in the process of building healthier communities and a friendlier space. Who creates the Polish version of the project?
Behind every cultural event and project there is a person, there is a team ... Creative Waves is a special undertaking that - entirely devoted to women - it is also entirely created by women. Some of us can be seen clearly, others remain hidden. It's high time we got to know / get to know each other:
this is how the Polish partner writes about the project. You can read more on the website of the Baltic Sea Cultural Center in Gdańsk.
embroidery workshops - Photo NCK Gdańsk
The most important goals of the project:
- Help in creating a friendly, understandable and inclusive public physical and digital space by helping to understand and use digital tools in an innovative way, using intangible cultural heritage
- Help in building traditional and digital public spaces as friendly and safe for everyone, especially the more sensitive;
- Integration of vulnerable groups; young people, women, immigrants in physical and digital space;
- Promotion of female leaders (partners and creative) in the process of building resilience
- Women as creators of change;
- Through stronger social ties and the production of cultural artifacts, the project aims to help vulnerable groups to enter the labor market;
- Providing participants with skills essential for competitiveness and employability
- To act inspide of the Covid
- Empowering representatives of vulnerable groups: women, youth and immigrants to feel identity, continuity and belonging, and provide them with employability-relevant skills;
- Helping to achieve greater gender equality by making women stronger despite the increased burden of pregnancy, social disruption etc;
Helping to build a sense of embeddedness in society and group;
- Encourage participants to act together and restore / revive some traditions and past activities, adapting them to current conditions, to halt climate degradation and build stronger social ties;
- Help to keep traditions and old activities alive and serve society in new conditions
- Use of recycled materials, exchange information on traditional and new ways of circularity
- Assist in the implementation / promotion of the EUSBSR, the European Green Deal and SDGs and make participants aware of the macroregional approach to finding common solutions;
- Project participants follow a circular approach and learn about traditional and more innovative ways of healthy, sustainable life - they will be better prepared to further adapt and share green / digital tools;
- Encourage participants to act together and restore / revive some traditions and past activities, adapting them to current conditions, to halt climate degradation and build stronger social ties;
- To show how art, culture, cultural interventions can help to respond to the contemporary challenges of the climate crisis, social unrest, digitization, deterioration of mental health, sense of security and belonging;
- Sensitize participants to stop environmental degradation and stop negative changes - participants will learn that many traditional habits (especially those related to the circular economy, less consumption, living closer to nature and in harmony with it) can be revived to improve the situation;
- Creation of new formats for expressing the intangible cultural heritage of the Baltic Sea;
- By exploring traditions, crafts, and ways of spending time together, the project aims to reinvent and redefine common 'Baltic' traditions and approaches;
- By exchanging information and finding common / new practices and cultural approaches, the project aims to raise awareness of the common Baltic heritage;
- The project aims to strengthen the contemporary identity of the BSR and introduce "Balticness" to rural areas
The project will implement its last activities in Gdańsk in September 2022 during the final conference.
"Slavic" - a meeting of creative women of the Creative Waves project
May 7th, the first online meeting of the participants of the Creative Waves project was held. Despite virtual reality, there was a lively discussion about what happened as part of the project activities in each of the participating countries.
A leader from Sweden, Ms Iwona Preis from Intercult Productions, introduced the participants to the main goals and assumptions of the project, and also told what happened in Sweden as part of the project. It introduced creative women along with their achievements. The benefits for them include, first of all, expanding the group of creative women, promoting culture, cultivating the heritage in the form of creating artistic products, combining styles and the possibility to broaden their knowledge on the use of recycled materials for artistic purposes.
The Pomeranian partner of the project - the Baltic Sea Cultural Center in Gdańsk involved the Kwidzyn Cultural Center in the implementation of the project and its activities were shown during the webinar. Two ethnic groups and their traditional works are widely known in the Pomeranian Voivodeship - they are Kashubs and Kociewiacy. The third group living in Powiśle, with their traditional white embroidery, is not yet well-known. Therefore, NCK decided to invite creative women from this area to the project.
Thanks to the project, creative women from Powiśle promote white embroidery as part of the cultural heritage of Powiśle, gain more systemic knowledge about the cultural heritage of Powiśle, so that they can promote it more effectively, create a template for Powiśle embroidery, transfer Powiśle embroidery into the digital language thanks to a specially created application, constantly broaden the group of people interested in this form of artistic handicraft. By participating in design workshops, they develop their skills and spend time together in a more creative way.
Two types of workshops were presented:
A. Workshops during which the participants got to know the secrets of the white embroidery of the Vistula region, which is the cultural heritage of Powiśle (Pomerania);
B. Workshops on new media - digital tools, including the designed application, thanks to which it will be possible to collect information about the post-Vistula cultural heritage, its promotion and support for its cultural and economic use.
One of the results of the project is also establishing cooperation with the Ethnography Department of the National Museum in Gdańsk, as well as the Ethnographic Museum in Toruń and the Museum of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn. Thanks to this cooperation, it will be possible to conduct professional research on post-Vistula embroidery, and then its digitization.
The webinar was prepared by Krystyna Wróblewska representing the Baltic Euroregion.
We encourage you to visit the partners' websites and visit them on social media, where the current information related to the project appears.
ABOUT HERITAGE AND TECHNOLOGY MEETINGS - a bunch of information about the women's project
Craft and digital language, tradition and new technologies - the international project "Creative Waves" combines and tames them, working to increase the visibility of creative women. The project included a webinar about how to combine cultural heritage with new technologies. We invite you to watch the recording of the speeches of two renowned speakers: Dr. Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka (independent critic and curator of design, co-author of the curriculum at the School of Form, SWPS) and Dr. Lissy Halloway-Attaway (associate professor of Media Art, Aesthetics and Narration at the University of Skovde in Sweden).
The aim of "Creative Waves" is to create a physical and virtual space where creative women can meet and exchange experiences, thus building strength and gaining self-confidence. Our activities are directed primarily to women whose interests are related to the sphere of tradition and craftsmanship.
During the webinar, which took place on February 28, we presented the project and the partners involved in it, but the most important were the speeches of the invited speakers. Agnieszka Cielecka-Jacobson and Lissa Holloway-Attaway talked about combining heritage, especially intangible heritage, with new technologies from the perspective of current trends and scientific research. They illustrated their speeches with specific examples of activities and projects from different parts of the world. We invite you to read the transcript of both presentations, which are available in English:
Below you will find a summary of the most important theses that appeared in the presentations of the experts.
The most important theses of the speech entitled "Crafts as a creation process":
common denominator of the Baltic Sea - common views, landscapes, colors of the surroundings, professions, crafts and materials result in a surprisingly unified aesthetics, similar patterns in crafts, artistic expressions etc.
by using available technologies, we can better understand materials and processes, which will help us keep disappearing crafts
Traveling in the past gives us hope for the future: craftsmen have significant knowledge that we can use to design elements produced by robots, factories or 3D printers
a few examples of how to be creative and create artistic products, while facing current problems, incl. how to deal with plastic waste:
- lamp PET project: lamps made of PET bottles by local people in different parts of the planet. Local women recycle their waste using traditional artisanal methods and patterns, keeping them busy and earning money. As a result, activities become more entrepreneurial and gain more confidence as their products gain popularity.
- teaching robots traditional handcraft - Teaching robots of traditional craftsmanship - weaving socks, embroidering, weaving baskets - results in bringing old traditions and crafts back to life and a better understanding of materials.
design it's a language which we can use to promote suistainable development, cooperation, creativity and innovation; it can become a connecting element between people
craft as a language that is not based on education or nationality
The purpose of technology is not to replace the work of artisans - but to support it.
The most important theses of the speech entitled "Creating and telling interactive stories and games for cultural heritage and cultural heritage":
"It is important what stories make worlds and what worlds make stories ”- the materials we use to tell our stories are the frames that define the way we tell. This framework changes with the nature of our material involvement.
when telling stories, we focus on materials - the materials we use affect the stories we tell; we move between them
we live in troubled times of the Anthropocene - the effects of human influence on the world are disturbing, which is related to the way stories are told. To change the way we influence the world, we must re-learn to tell stories. We have to rethink the new media.
"Tentacle" creativity - when telling a story, it is worth being inspired by the multisensory tentacles of octopuses that collect information about taste, touch, smell, etc. In the story, we should use all ways of understanding the world - it is about multi-sensory, multi-directional material experiences. The tentacle approach can be useful in transforming traditional handicrafts. tentacles
storytelling about heritage through technology, e.g. through new spaces and museums
combining technologies (computers, digital design tools, AR / VR, AI, programming, software, platforms) and the area of arts and humanities (crafts, literature, performing arts, art, history, graphics, sound / music, video / photography, studies socio-cultural), as an opportunity to create a new way of talking about cultural heritage in schools, museums, art galleries and at exhibitions or online platforms
new technologies: when we use Augmented Reality, all users are artists; transmedia, or how to tell stories on multiple platforms; MR (Mixed Reality) as an encounter between physical and visual reality
co-creation can take place through participation. Co-created projects give voice to local communities and respond to their needs. At the same time, they provide space for community involvement and dialogue, and help participants develop skills that support their individual and social goals
post-digital era - instead of thinking about the possibilities of using new technologies, we should focus on the content conveyed by using digital technologies and solutions, we build awareness of intangible cultural heritage - including micro-heritage
by using digital technologies such as games, we encourage you to read books and visit museums and discover local stories
to help people learn about tangible and intangible heritage, we can encourage them to play board games - keep telling the same stories through different media
new technologies help us to understand what heritage is and what heritage we have in a given area. Their use increases the ability to think conceptually
the need to develop intergenerational connections - it is worth considering what technologies are needed for this
combining intangible cultural heritage and new technologies can provide residents with new business opportunities
Pełen zapis webinaru dostępny jest w języku angielskim na platformie YouTube: link
Once again, we would like to thank all participants for the time spent together and an interesting discussion!
Project partners: Baltic Sea Cultural Center in Gdańsk (Poland), Euroregion Bałtyk, Estonian Women Studies and Research Center ENUT (research unit; Estonia).
Project leader: Intercult Productions (Sweden). The project received funding from the Council of the Baltic Sea States Project Support Facility.
