Art. We Grow! is a development project addressed to organizers of cultural events, teachers, and educators with many years of experience, who work through art and want to regain freshness of thinking, self-efficacy, and creative freedom.
The purpose of the project is to reinforce professional competences through workshops, residency, a summer lab, and a conference, as well as to develop models of cooperation between organizers of cultural events, teachers, and artists, based on contemporary art. At Art. We Grow!, we stimulate exchange of experiences, joint creation, and the adoption of a perspective where art becomes a tool of freedom, fun, critical thinking, and creativity.
The concept of the project is based on the idea of lifelong learning, emphasizing the value of education as a process that continues for one’s whole life. The point of departure is abstraction that allows for going beyond common patterns, supports the expression of emotions, and makes it possible to build specific competences for new ways of understanding reality.
The Art. We Grow! project is carried out by Cricoteka together with the A Sztuka? Foundation within the framework of the program accompanying the Wild Frolicking. Exhibition for All exhibition. The project is co-financed by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage through the Culture Promotion Fund.
Art. We Grow! comprises:
ISKRA: Art and Education Lab
ISKRA: Summer Art and Education Lab is a five-day cycle of workshops addressed to experienced organizers of cultural activities, cultural educators, and teachers, who want to go beyond tried and tested solutions and avoid professional rut. It’s an offer for those who work with processes and relations in the local dimension, but feel that they need a new impulse, a fresh language, and a real exchange with other practitioners.
ISKRA is five days of discovering together how contemporary art may open a space for discussion, building relations, and developing imagination. The program is addressed to individuals who work with children and the youth in schools and cultural institutions and who want to develop their skills in terms of utilizing the potential of art in everyday educational practice.
ISKRA is a program created together with artists who consider working with children or the youth an important element of their creative practice. Five artists have been invited; each of them will host one of the workshop days, sharing their practices and methods of work. These will be Daniel Arbaczewski, Justyna Mędrala, Dominika Szala-Wentland, Monika Szpunar, Izabela Rutkowska, and Jaśmina Wójcik.
The ISKRA program covers working with the body, objects, space, sound, and image. Through experiments and joint exercises, the participants will be able to experience how diverse artistic practices affect the way of thinking, communication in a group, and the stimulation of imagination. One important theme will be the practice of including the voice of children and the youth in the creative process: listening to their perspectives, responding to their ideas, and treating them as co-creators and not just addressees of activities.
ISKRA is also about having time for yourself to look at your own experiences and exchange them with others; a time when you can not only get inspired, but also ask questions and have doubts. The warmth and the rhythm of the summer day that is a part of the program allows for being together in a more free and relaxed way than in the case of everyday work.
Practical information:
When? August 17th to 21st (five workshop days), from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM
Where? The locations of the events will be provided at a later date
For whom? For organizers of cultural events, cultural educators, and teachers. For persons working with children and the youth in schools and cultural institutions.
Price? PLN 300
What else? Recruitment takes place through the recruitment form: https://forms.gle/bVkXDfvbYynhLF686. Applications can be sent until June 28th, end of day. Sending an application form does not mean you will automatically be qualified to participate in the ISKRA program. The list of qualified persons will be published on June 30th on the websites of Cricoteka and the A Sztuka? Foundation. The qualified persons will be sent a link to purchase a ticket. If you need an invoice, one can be issued. Cricoteka provides coffee breaks and a lunch. Cricoteka will not reimburse the participants for the costs of travel or accommodation.
School in Movement/Shared Fields residencies
Through open recruitment, we will select two pairs (a total of four persons) who, for two weeks, will work on original activities inspired with the Wild Frolicking exhibition. The point of departure for the residency is looking together for new methods of working with children through contemporary art. The meetings will be of research/practical nature: the participants of the residency program will utilize the exhibition space as a laboratory for observation, experimentation, and development of their own educational tools.
The effect of the program will not be a work of art, but a prototype of an educational activity, a script, a tool, or a method of work, ready to be used by cultural institutions or persons who work with children.
Practical information:
When? In September 2026, in the form of two two-week residencies for four persons
Where? Cricoteka (ul. Nadwiślańska 2–4, Kraków)
For whom? The program is addressed to persons working at the meeting of art, education, and working with children
Price? The participants will be remunerated for their participation in the residency program.
What else? The participants will be selected through open recruitment at the turn of June and July 2026.
Master workshops is a series of workshops dedicated to organizers of cultural activities, teachers, educators, and everyone who believes in cultural education. Artists from France, Italy, and the United Kingdom will share their practices, inspirations, and methods of work, which may become a source of new ideas or experiences for the participants. The series of workshops is based on five areas: play, coincidence, movement, surprise, and space. The invited hosts are Simona Lobefaro and Alessandro Lumare, the artists behind the Segni Mossi project who combine choreography, movement, and drawing into an experimental, creative play that engages the participants; Herve Tullet, an artist who creates interactive books for children and installations where the participants, through words, touch, and experimentation, become co-authors; Alessandra Falconi, whose performances and artistic activities are based on interaction, movement, and rhythm, engaging the participants in a creative process full of spontaneousness and fun; Lucy Cran and Bill Leslie, who make up the Leap Then Look artistic duo and build amazing and engaging installations using shapes and forms. During the workshops, together with the invited artists, we will explore what play, curiosity, strengthening of competences, respite, and discovering new opportunities offered by art are.
The first of the planned workshops is:
Segni Mossi PINK Training
We will free signs from paper and gestures from their repeated nature. We will allow the unexpected to lead the way. We will create complex equivalent arrangements and experience sudden, yet conscious cracks. We will start watching with our backs and discovering through our bodies. We will retain the most subtle traces and send signs far beyond their ordinary boundaries. We will draw like herds and like clouds moving across the sky—for the pleasure of those looking up from the ground.
PINK trainingis a creativity training event intended for organizers of cultural events, educators, teachers, and persons interested in using movement and choreography in educational practices. It is an experience of balance, connections, and intensive impulses.
Segni Mossi is a project created by Alessandro Lumare, a visual artist, and Simona Lobefaro, a choreographer, to investigate the relationship between dance and graphic symbols in working with adults and children. In their activities, they create physical and imaginary spaces in which they experiment with individual ways of moving and leaving graphic marks that constitute a direct response from particular individuals to being in a space and in a group. The purpose of Segni Mossi is not to teach the visual arts or dance, but to create opportunities for people to get enraptured and to discover these areas.
When? June 27th (from 3:00 PM to 8:00 PM) and June 28th (from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM), a total of 10 workshop hours
Where? Cricoteka Theatrical Hall (ul. Nadwiślańska 2–4, Kraków)
Price? Tickets are PLN 450: https://bilety.cricoteka.pl/index.php/kup-bilet/segni-mossi-pink-training-warsztaty-dla-animatorow-kultury-projekt-sztuka-rosniemy-2026-06-27-15-00
What else? In case of questions, please call us at (12) 442 77 70 ext. 107 or e-mail us at justyna.dron@cricoteka.pl. We will provide snacks on Saturday and a lunch on Sunday.
A workshop with Lucy Cran and Bill Leslie / Leap Then Look
TBC
A workshop with Alessandra Falconi / Zaffiria
TBC
A workshop with Herve Tullet
TBC
Educational conference
Cricoteka, the A Sztuka? Foundation, and the Małopolska Region Institute of Culture create a space for reflection on what brings together education and contemporary art. The conference is a place for exchanging experiences and inspirations. It is an attempt at looking for ways to make art a living tool in education and in critical pondering and a space for the development of abstract thinking, freedom, and play—things that both children and adults need.
Practical information:
When? The date of the event will be provided at a later date.
Where? Cricoteka (ul. Nadwiślańska 2–4, Kraków)
For whom? The event is addressed to practitioners, artists, pedagogues, educators, and authors of programs, both in cultural institutions and outside of them, who work on the development of abstract, critical, and creative thinking in their audiences and target groups.
Price? Participation in the conference is free of charge. Cricoteka will not reimburse the costs of travel.
What else? The event will take place at a location free of architectural barriers. A portion of the conference will be translated into the Polish sign language.
The project will be summarized in a publication addressed to organizers of cultural events, educators, teachers, and persons working with art in educational and social contexts. The publication will bring together the experiences from all four components of the project: the ISKRA Summer Art and Education Lab, the residency program, the conference, and the series of master workshops on creative freedom. It will offer simple exercises, conversations between practitioners in the area of culture, descriptions of prototypes of tools, case studies illustrating cooperation between schools and cultural institutions, and good practices for work based on processes, participation, and relations. One important element of the publication will be the “by practitioners for practitioners” perspective. The publication will be made available under an open license.
Curators: Anna Bargiel, Justyna Droń, Anna Grajewska
Artists invited to cooperate: Daniel Arbaczewski, Lucy Cran, Alessandra Falconi, Bill Leslie, Simona Lobefaro, Alessandro Lumare, Justyna Mędrala, Dominika Szala-Wentland, Monika Szpunar, Izabela Rutkowska, Herve Tullet, Jaśmina Wójcik
Conference programming team: Maja Dobkowska, Justyna Droń, Anna Grajewska, Justyna Mazur-Kiwer, Marta Wójcicka
Promotion: Małgorzata Kmita-Fugiel, Zofia Mikołajska
Visual identity: Wojtek Janikowski
Co-organizers: A Sztuka? Foundation, the Małopolska Region Institute of Culture
Media patronage: TVP 3 Kraków, Mint Magazine, Magazyn Szum, Gazeta Wyborcza
The project is co-financed by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage through the Culture Promotion Fund, which is a state special-purpose fund, within the framework of the Cultural Education program carried out by the National Cultural Center.
