UK/Poland Cultural Season 2025: Imagining Future Collaborations Report

As part of the preparations for the UK/Poland Season 2025, the British Council commissioned the Strategic Dreamers team to do a scoping research of the arts and culture/creative sectors in order to analyse the current situation in Poland.

The ‘UK/Poland Cultural Season 2025: Imagining Future Collaborations’ report outlines the plans, needs, potential, and perceptions that arts and culture organisations have reported with regard to cooperation under the British Council’s UK/Poland Season 2025. The study was conducted in 7 Polish cities (Katowice, Krakow, Lublin, Poznan, the Tri-City, Warsaw, and Wroclaw) and involved 70 institutions and organisations. Its objective was to identify plans related to cooperation between Polish and British partners as well as their experience of various crises and the ideas on how to deal with them.

It presents an attempt at creating new models of international cooperation, including adaptation and resilience mechanisms so as to cope with our fragile, anxious, non-linear and contradictory reality. The majority of respondents stressed that the old formulas for international cooperation were no longer adequate in the face of the current reality. In their view, crises have become the new normal. The COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit, the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, and inflation have radically changed and continue to impact the way people work, feel, create art and culture, and approach collaborative initiatives. Many people surveyed indicated that they are willing to develop new cooperation formats and models based on a new set of values and principles, adapting them to the new reality.

The report is an attempt to articulate and conceptualise these needs through an imaginary journey into the future – the future not as a determinate, linear series of events, but as a variety of alternative, hypothetical ramifications – many different futures that could be influenced or shaped.

The majority of participants agreed that preparations for the UK/Poland Season 2025 are a great opportunity to build new connections and create long-lasting collaborations. The significance of joint projects lies in gaining mutual knowledge and sharing experience between the two countries in order to bring about change.

Download the report