From a city shaped by water, wind and crossings
Written by Katarzyna Szewciów, a host of the upcoming Satellite BEYOND, “Resilient Ties” taking place in Gdańsk, Poland, 19-20 May 2026.
This letter is a part of Culture Action Europe’s At the Heart series, “Love Letters to Culture.” This February, we’re inviting hosts of the upcoming 2026 Satellite BEYOND events to write their own love letter. Not necessarily to a person, but to something that holds meaning within their Satellites: a location, an object, a site, an event, a fleeting moment between people, or something more abstract, like potential, hope, care, continuity. These letters speak to what members love about culture, why this matters where they are, and what makes their Satellite more than just a programme.
What an intimate privilege to see where care blossoms across our network’s communities. Learn more and join us at a Satellite near you.
Dear Culture,
I am writing to you from a city shaped by water, wind and crossings. From a place where nothing important has ever been built alone.
Ties are not decorative here. They are structural. They hold when conditions change — and here, conditions always change. Gdańsk has learned this over centuries: how to live with uncertainty, how to keep going without freezing, and how to remain open without losing ourselves. Perhaps that is why you can feel care here. It is part of our daily practice.
In Gdańsk, care lives in spaces that are not neutral. In former churches turned into cultural centres. In warehouses that remember labour and now host dialogue. In institutions that open their doors not only to audiences, but to questions, disagreements, and unfinished thoughts. Care blossoms when we choose to stay with complexity rather than simplify it away.
Culture, you show up here in small, almost invisible gestures. In people who stay after the meeting ends because the conversation is not finished. In artists who work with communities long before they produce anything that can be “shown.” In cultural workers who understand that wellbeing is a condition for participation, imagination, and trust.
Our Satellite, Resilient Ties, grows from this soil. It is an attempt to listen carefully to what is already happening in our region, across borders, across languages, across different political and historical sensitivities. Austria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine: different contexts, uneven resources, shared tensions. There is also a shared intuition that culture can still be a space where social resilience is rehearsed, not declared.
We see care here in how institutions support artistic freedom even when it is uncomfortable. In how they resist being reduced to entertainment or political ornament. In how they host difficult conversations about technology, ecology, health, and power without pretending to have easy answers. Care appears where culture is treated not only as infrastructure, but also as a living relationship.
This letter doesn’t promise solutions, but it offers recognition.
We recognise that culture survives not because it is efficient, but because it is relational.
We recognise that resilience is not about hardness, but about connection.
We recognise that ties, when tended to, can stretch, hold, and carry us further than we expect.
With care,
always unfinished,
and deeply connected,
Love,
Baltic Sea Cultural Centre Team