Joanna Orlik

Regional Institution of Culture and Goals of the Cultural Development in the Region

April 29th 2010

Point of departure About how culture requires courage

You should know that there is a reason why people get attached to things that are ordinary, weak, vague or voodoo-like, to illusions and accidently heard information, that means to un-education. Because education is discovery and handling the truth - the real understanding of the truth. And to handle the truth is always very difficult.

To get to know culture, which means getting to know reality and truth, one needs tremendous courage. A man gets to know the truth with all his heart, fate, his whole being. A man can acquire culture only at the price of life and death. People always willingly conform to unclear explanations of unpleasant truths rather than to harsh, uncomplicated sentence truth – simple and unornamented - that is education, which means culture. Deep inside, people know that everything that’s real and human is realistic; therefore it was conceived in blood, sweat and passion. Yet, they prefer to whisper, with their faces down, that babies are brought by storks. This way is nicer and more comfortable. However, a stork doesn’t bring

culture.

Sándor Márai „The Book of Herbs”, translated into Polish by Feliks Netz, Warszawa 2006, page 104

Key activities

CAUSING THOUGHTS TO FLOW IN PEOPLE’S HEADS

Libraries (regional)

• source – supply/stock – heritage – thought • topics – information – leadership - discovery • book – object – form – celebration • reading – text – analysis – composition • declamation – rhetoric – eristic • author – quotation – Creative Commons • text collections – media – digitalization • place – habit – critical thinking –

interpretation – exchange

• environment – system – law – solution –

development – future (…)

Presentation scheme of the cultural center Step 1 – surroundings – where are we and what should be done here?

Step 2 – conditions – how does the ideal compare with the reality?

Step 3 – plan Step 4 – team your plan?

– what follows after what?

– who to work with to develop Step 5 – projects – what activities will help us implement our plan?

Step 0 – “business card” – personal story of the director

Actions undertaken by MIK

• Activities to develop

regional identity

• Support

staff development institution and culture

• Promotion of Małopolska

cultural products

• Promotion of innovation and

new and fresh strategies in culture

• Making

modern art popular

• Building

the position of Małopolska Poland and Europe in

Nasze priorytety:

www.autoportret.pl

Self portrait

Earspeakers www.malopolskiedzwieki.pl

MIK Art Library

• 23 thousand books about art – collection with profiles • Collection on hand at MIK – books about the region’s cultural heritage • MIK Archives • Contacts with people – collection on hand • Unique possibility of borrowing albums to take home • Subscription • Liberatura Reading-room – special place on the map of Małopolska and Krakow • Meetings about art, liberatura and urban space • „K27. The Street & Wall Weekly” – artistic activities within urban space

MIK Art Library

Information

www • www.mik.krakow.pl • www.muzeoblog.org

• www.kulturamałopolski.pl

• www.autoportret.pl

• www.wartopamietac.info

• www.dilettante.pl

• www.dnidziedzictwa.pl

• • • • social networks Flickr facebook youTube slideshare e-shop

New technologies Social networks/web 2.0:

        Wikipedia (materials) Blogs (individual texts) Mikroblogs: Twitter, Blip (short individual texts) Flickr (photos) YouTube / Vimeo (videos) SlideShare (documents, presentations) Google (working groups) Facebook – lifestream (electronic journal)

New technologies Advantages of using social (public) networks for cultural institutions:

 additional channels of text distribution  new audience (active, modern, searching)  institution’s image (open, modern, accesible, dynamic and listening to recipients)  expanded outreach from local to global

New technologies Weaknesses/threats connected with social networks:

   Lack of time and staff who will take care of the “life” of an online institution, too much substance spread around caused by institution’s will to be present in all services: it’s better to do less, but do it well difficulties of keeping pace with rapidly changing technology

New technologies www.goodreads.com:

      social blog for book readers (since 2006) 3 mln users, 85 mln recommended books mission: to make people enjoy reading, to influence the level of reading in the world it allows you to create your own “shelves” for recommended books it allows you to create discussion groups for different book genres Poland Now Group: 197 members (as of 27.04.2010)