| “The most tender place in my heart is for strangers. I know it's unkind, but my own blood is much too dangerous.” Neko Case “Hold on Hold on” What is it about the opening of Case’s song that strikes a worried chord every time I play it? Is it the fabulous twin-guitar riff that plays good cop/bad cop with your ears, or maybe something about those first few lines that has poetic, painful relevance to Polish communities in 2007? Poles seem to be leaving their motherland in force. It is, for those sick of ongoing corruption and inner- conflict, a place they no longer feel like calling home. Surveys conducted recently into the new patterns of EU migration suggest around 40% of us in the UK have no intention of going back. And why would we? Back where? The British know how to integrate migrant communities better than any other state in Europe, and in many ways we feel more welcome here than we do “back home”. But, I ask myself, what does a Pole of average age, education and experience find when they encounter their own kind here, in London? Is the government looking after its own abroad? Are our community centres open to both the old Polonia and the new generation, keen to “strike out” into the future (pardon the Solidarity pun, but it seems ironically relevant today)? Are we at one with ourselves in a land free from the ghosts of our geographical past? I’m not going to answer those questions here. Not because I’m afraid to, and not because most of the Polish press in the UK cover the bad news continuously anyway. I’m simply too busy doing something about it to whinge on about the “same old, same old”. In trying to solve the puzzle of Poland’s future, I look back and see that many of its world-famous children realised their potential in exile. Chopin, Conrad, Kieslowski - did they have to leave its gravitational pull to flourish? The best-known Polish artist currently at work in the world is Polanski, his most successful film “The Pianist” – both artist and protagonist ghetto survivors, both having to look to the “outside” for freedom and support. Do these striking coincidences tell us something we need to know about ourselves? When a year ago myself and Bartek Dziadosz, the director of “Portrait – young Polish artists in a New Europe” (a feature length documentary, currently in production), decided to set up a migrant artists organisation, we knew it could not be another “ghetto”. Those among us who we saw creating successfully in the UK were always collaborating with other “nationals”, showing their work in non-Polonia locations, speaking in many tongues. Their vision guided us in setting up Apart Arts, currently organising events all over Europe, both real and on-line. We have opened a gallery, almost finished shooting our film and are staging two exhibitions at City Hall in the next two weeks, showcasing the work of young Polish artists living and working in the UK. We are also hosting “No Way Back Where”, an integration event at Conway Hall the first Saturday in August. Representatives from both Polish and Romanian Cultural Institutes will join speakers from Russia and the Czech Republic, and poets from Poland and Persia, in asking how the different ways in which artists express themselves can be used to shape the future of our continent. And as for “back there”? Poland itself? I think back to Case’s song, this time focusing on the title and its relevance to that “average” Pole abroad today. Although so many are refusing to go back, history teaches us this diaspora will end too, eventually. Many of us will return, with new visions with which to continue rebuilding a land we can’t help but be part of. Did you really think, after hundreds of years of conflict and struggle, that we were going to “Cinderella” into a fully-functioning, modern state in the space of a single generation? So, as the song implores, please hold on. Don’t look back with constant grief, but don’t burn bridges or bury the past within yourself either. There’s little future for any of us in that. |
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