Kłodzko, Łódź, Wrocław and now Warsaw – Bareforytka Roma
Wandering Festival “Romani Culture”: Warsaw 2024 – Bareforytka Roma
The “Romani Culture” Festival travels across Poland every year to present to a wide audience the most interesting cultural achievements of the Roma ethnic minority living and creating in a selected region of the country. In 2024, its purpose is to present the cultural achievements of Roma living in Warsaw for generations. It aims to strengthen the creative activities undertaken as part of this local culture and to document its most interesting phenomena.
Bareforytka Roma – Warsaw’s Roma
Traditional Roma culture is part of Poland’s cultural heritage. There is one Romani culture, but it has many faces. The multiplicity of its expressions, its diversity depending on the place of residence and the history of a given community, influenced our decision to create the formula of a travelling festival – wandering around Poland, documenting and presenting the achievements of the Roma from different groups and in different places of residence. “Romani Culture” is a travelling festival of Roma culture. In 2024, the festival will be hosted by Roma activists, artists, cultural creators from Warsaw and the Mazovian Voivodeship, i.e. Bareforytka Roma, which in Romani means Roma from the big city, i.e. the Roma of Warsaw.
The presentation of the most interesting cultural achievements of Warsaw’s Roma took place during festival events organised in a thriving cultural facility, the Multicultural Centre, located in a busy location in Praga Północ.
We invited Roma artists and activists from Warsaw, as well as prominent Roma scholars, to participate in the project. With them we jointly organised the Festival, which was attended by the Roma community living in the region, invited guests, as well as random passers-by and tourists.
The 4th edition of the Wandering Festival “Romani Culture” took place on Saturday 8 June 2024 at the Multicultural Centre in Warsaw. It lasted all day. In front of the Centre, we were welcomed by a model of a tabor wagon created by artists Józek Gałązka (design) and Róża Łakatosz. It was a special combination of modern art and traditional Roma art used to take souvenir photos. In the rooms of the Multicultural Centre, we organised an exhibition and ethnographic corner presenting the collections of the Museum of Roma Culture in Warsaw and visually narrating their history, from the oldest to the present day. Andrzej Grzymała-Kazłowski, curator and founder of the Museum, talked about history and his collections in a richly illustrated lecture. Artistic activities took off from the beginning of the Festival – under the guidance of the artist Noemi Łakatosz, we painted a picture entitled Manusza, or People. Once again, this was an opportunity to make individual graphic statements about the participants’ identities, which formed one collective statement on the subject. No special skills were needed for these intuition-based activities, anyone could take part and join in the collective work at any time.
Immediately after the painting workshop, the “Miro Iło” art workshop took place, during which Rajmund Siwak told Roma fairy tales of his own creation and talked to the participants about Roma culture. At the same time, the audience created graphic signs inspired by Roma culture on canvas bags. The art workshops were led by Noemi and Róża Łakatosz.
After midday, we began a panel discussion entitled ”Bareforytka Roma – the Warsaw Roma community – past, present, future challenges”. The panel discussion on the current situation of Roma culture in Warsaw was moderated by Agnieszka Caban from the “Home on the Borderland” Foundation. Participants included Ewa Pawłowska, Roksana Mroczek Wajs and Patrycja Jenny Mroczek Wajs from the Warsaw Roma community and Andrzej Grzymała-Kazłowski from the Museum of Roma Culture in Warsaw. The panellists raised very important issues concerning the Roma community in Poland, in Warsaw, the discussion was substantive and emotional, but we had to cut it short due to the fact that there were new guests waiting for the musical feast, i.e. a concert by Jędrek Pawłowski and his band. We closed the 4th edition of the Festival “Romani Culture”, dedicated to the culture of Warsaw’s Roma – Bareforytka Roma – in a cheerful and dancing mood.
This year, Warsaw’s Roma communities were less represented in the Festival audience, most of the participants were from outside. Our guests took part in the festival events with great interest and asked questions about the Roma community, sometimes bold and profound, receiving factual answers from experts – Roma from Warsaw, as well as the Łakatosz family from Poznań, our friends.
Photo documentation from the Wandering Festival “Romani Culture”: Warsaw 2024 (Bareforytka Roma) was made by Ada Szulc and video by Delfin Łakatosz.
The coordinator of the 4th edition of the Wandering Festival “Romani Culture” was Małgorzata Brus, supported by the team of the Dom Kultury Foundation. We were hosted by the Multicultural Centre in Warsaw.
Co-financed with funds from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage as part of the programme of the National Centre of Culture: EtnoPolska. Edition 2024
Działania nasze realizowane są w siedzibie CENTRUM Wielokulturowego w Warszawie w ramach bezpłatnego użyczenia przestrzeni.
