In the latest podcast in the Holistic Heritage series, the Kraków Heritage Hub’s John Beauchamp is in Bucharest for the 2024 European Cultural Heritage Summit, where he takes a closer look at the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards.

Since 2002, the awards have championed the best cultural heritage initiatives from across Europe, with a total of just under 4,000 entries from as many as 46 countries. Why is the award so popular? And for all the programmes which have been awarded, what has the impact been of the award? Find out why it is so important to apply and get your project highlighted by Europe’s leading cultural heritage organisation.

In the podcast we hear from Jacek Purchla, Vice-President of Europa Nostra who was also Chairman of the awards jury in 2024. We also hear from Agata Wąsowska-Pawlik, Europa Nostra board member and director of the International Cultural Centre in Kraków, and Elena Bianchi, Programme Manager of the European Heritage Awards at Europa Nostra, who explains the ins and outs of the prize.

And what about the former winners? How has the award made an influence on their projects? We hear from Eugen Vaida, who is now a jury member but whose Ambulance for Momuments project rescues heritage-listed buildings across Romania (2020). Additionally, we hear from Anna Szekely from the Via Transilvanica in Romania (2023), Francesca Moncada from Le Dimore del Quartetto (2019), as well as this year’s winners: Łucja Cieślar and Paulina Adamska from the Serfenta Assocation in Cieszyn (Poland), Marek Gołosz from the Ignacy Historic Mine in Rybnik (Poland), and Caroline Fernolend from the Mihai Eminescu Trust (Romania).

Do you have an amazing initiative which fits the bill and you think could win a prize? You can find out more details here.

Coming up in this episode, we go up to Lithuania to find out the activities undertaken in Kaunas following the city’s remarkable success as European Capital of Culture in 2022 and its inscription to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023.

During a meeting in Kraków, head of the Heritage Hub Katarzyna Jagodzińska speaks to researcher and architectural historian Vaidas Petrulis from the Kaunas University of Technology.

They talk about the specificity of Kaunas’ modernist architecture in terms of its protection and recognition, as well as its importance for the Lithuanian nation during the inter-war period when the “true” Lithuanian capital – Vilnius – was part of Poland.

The title of the UNESCO inscription is “Modernist Kaunas: Architecture of Optimism, 1919-1939”. Listen to the interview to find out more about what lies behind the inscription’s title and what this architecture means for the city today.

In our search for the cultural heritage of Ukrainians in Poland we have arrived in Podlasie – a region encompassing the Polish-Belarusian borderland, with the Narew river meandering through its centre and the World Heritage listed Białowieża forest straddling the border.

For decades, Ukrainian inhabitants of this land have been struggling with a harmful stereotype that this region – as a national and cultural borderland – is a contact point between Poles and Belarusians. This has seemingly condemned the ethnically Ukrainian population of this area to oblivion. Yet a great many Orthodox inhabitants of the villages and towns between the Bug and the Narew rivers belong to the Ukrainian ethnic area in terms of language, material culture and folklore.

The cultural identity of Ukrainians who are still living in the area is strong, but they indicate that it’s fading. People are moving out to other regions or abroad, children don’t use the language of their grandparents any longer in their daily communication, and in the meantime whatever traditional architecture remains is falling apart.

However, all is not lost, and it would be skepticism to say that it was too late to keep this heritage alive. The Kraków Heritage Hub’s John Beauchamp together with Katarzyna Jagodzińska are at a local privately-owned open-air museum, Skansen Koźliki, where they meet Jerzy Misiejuk to find the tangible essence of Ukrainian Podlasie.

Also in the episode, we meet a number of local activists and researchers connected to the Podlasie Scientific Institute in Bielsk Podlaski. We hear from journalist Jerzy Gawryluk, the editor-in-chief of local Ukrainian-language newspaper Nad Buhom i Narwoju, local poet Eugenia Gawryluk, teachers Elżbieta Tomczuk from Bielsk Podlaski and Irena Wiszenko from Czeremcha, the home of the Hiłoczka Ukrainian youth song ensemble. We also meet Maria Ryżyk, head of the Association of Ukrainians in Podlasie and a member of the local council in Bielsk Podlaski.

This podcast was produced as part of the “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ukrainians in Poland: Mapping and Dissemination” project realised by the Faculty of International and Political Studies at the Jagiellonian University with the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków. The project is led by Dr Olga Kich-Masłej from the Department of Polish-Ukrainian Studies.

The funding was provided by the Strategic Programme Excellence Initiative at the Jagiellonian University.

In this edition of Holistic Heritage we are in Romania, where we hike the Via Transilvanica with the trail’s co-founder Ana Szekely.

Ana stands behind the success of Via Transilvanica, the longest walking trail in Romania, by many considered one of the most beautiful in the world. Measuring 1,400 kilometres, it crosses seven regions and many differing ethnic communities across the country.

In 2023 Via Transilvanica won the European Heritage Award / Europa Nostra Award – the highest recognition for heritage projects awarded jointly by the European Commission and Europa Nostra.

A year later, in August 2024, Katarzyna Jagodzińska and John Beauchamp from the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków travel south to Piatra Fântânele, the headquarters of Tășuleasa Social association. They have their walking boots on and are ready to explore Romania’s precious heritage.

You can always meet someone interesting on the trail! We bumped into Ewa Chwałko, a seasoned Polish hiker and writer who was walking the route from the end to the beginning in Putna, north of the Tășuleasa base.

We would also like to thank the family and staff at La căsuța din pădure gastronomic point for their kind hospitality and amazing meatball soup! Poftă bună!

We are in the Beskid Niski mountain range in southern Poland which is home of the Lemkos, an ethnic group of Carpathian highlanders. They have their own language, which may be classified as a dialect of Rusyn, akin to Ukrainian, and have been here in the Polish Carpathians for generations.

The latest Polish census data from 2021 reveals that a fraction over 13,600 people are Lemko or identify as having a mixed Lemko identity. What is interesting, though, is that the majority of Lemkos don’t live here in Lemkovyna. A closer look at the statistics reveals that more Lemkos live in Dolny Śląsk in the south-west, than in Małopolska, which is home to the Beskid Niski.

In the episode, the Hub’s John Beauchamp and Katarzyna Jagodzińska travel across green hills and virgin landscapes to visit people who struggle against the odds to save their heritage, build recognition and empower a new generation to continue the development of the customs, traditions, skills and the language.

We meet Mychajło Markowicz, founder of the Nowycia Foundation in Nowica which aims to promote Ukrainian culture in the Beskid Niski. The wooden building where foundation is located - known as a chyża - in the past used to be a place for meetings and the exchange of information, a latter-day Whatsapp or social media platform. Nowadays, as Markowicz himself says, the Nowica Foundation wants to fill this gap and be a sort of Lemko internet.

Then we have a late breakfast at the agrotourism farm ‘Swystowy Sad’ in Ropki run by Grażyna Betlej-Furman, who tells us about Lemko cuisine, local produce and the way of life in Lemkovyna.

In the village of Łosie we speak to Wasyl Szlanta, whose professional life revolved around traditional tar making and who was one of the founders of the Łemkowska Watra festival.

In Sękowa we visit the Majsternia Karpat workshop and inn run by Anna Czuchta and Piotr Jasion. We learn about changing Lemko language, local cuisine and herbs.

Finally we have a meeting with Julia Doszna, a famous Lemko singer for whom Lemko language and traditional singing is an integral part of her identity.

All the people we met during several days of our journey finally come together at Łemkowska Watra (or Lemkivska Vatra), the biggest Lemko culture festival, which is a compulsory event in the yearly calendar, not just for Lemkos, but for the wide community of Ukrainians.

This podcast was produced as part of the “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ukrainians in Poland: Mapping and Dissemination” project realised by the Faculty of International and Political Studies at the Jagiellonian University with the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków. The project is led by Dr Olga Kich-Masłej from the Department of Polish-Ukrainian Studies.

The funding was provided by the Strategic Programme Excellence Initiative at the Jagiellonian University.

We are in Przemyśl which plays host to the Narodniy Dim – the National House – which is run by the Association of Ukrainians in Poland. A number of families which were deported from this area in 1947 as part of Operation Vistula have since returned and are cultivating their regional traditions, language and music.

We take a look at some of these stories as part of a project which aims to draw attention to Ukrainian cultural heritage and its rekindling after years of neglect.

In the episode, the Hub’s John Beauchamp and Katarzyna Jagodzińska are in Przemyśl to meet a number of Ukrainian activists,including:

• Igor Horków – director of the Narodniy Dim in Przemyśl who underlines that the house open “for everyone”
• Maria Tucka – a local educator who promotes regional costumes and the ‘Pearls of the Borderland’ ethnographic collection
• Maria Mryczko – a local artist who works with papercutting as part of the Narodniy Dim’s activities
• Tatiana Czarna-Nakonieczna – a local activist who runs the ‘Krajka’ and ‘Krajeczka’ folk music groups

In the podcast we also hear from Tatiana Harasym and Aleksandra Steć from Krajka. Daria Pulkovska joins them for the vocal pieces presented in the podcast. Maksym Nakonieczny (Tatiana’s son) also makes an appearance as the frontman of the Hraybery folk ensemble, which also accompanies Krajeczka.

This podcast was made as part of the academic research project “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ukrainians in Poland: Mapping and Dissemination”. The project is funded by the Jagiellonian University as part of its Strategic Programme Excellence Initiative.

For this episode we are in Lviv and visiting the Jam Factory Art Center. This new space in an old and run-down suburb of Ukraine’s western city has been in the making for years. Now it has become Lviv’s most fashionable centre for contemporary artists both from Ukraine and beyond, and has the ambition to become the country’s premier exhibition space.

Creating such a massive area for visual and performative art in an old industrial space has proven to be a challenge. However, for the Jam Factory team, nothing seems to be impossible, especially when they have the help of founder and Swiss cultural entrepreneur Harald Binder.

John Beauchamp and Katarzyna Jagodzińska, head of the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub for Central and Eastern Europe, meet the Jam Factory’s Executive Director Bozhena Pelenska in Lviv. Artur Wabik from Kraków’s Comics Museum also joins us for this episode.

Throughout the episode we’ll be finding out more on the Jam Factory as well as take a tour of this new state-of-the-art centre.

We’re in the centre of Lviv to visit UA Comix – a comic book store, as you might have guessed from the name. But it’s so much more than that. In fact, you could say that comics are now helping the Ukranian war effort against Russia.

Bohdan Kordoba is the founder and CEO of UA Comix. Even though it has always published comics and graphic novels, the full-scale invasion by Russia has meant that more and more publications are geared towards Ukrainian language and culture. We also hear from Ruslana Koropatka, Editor-in-Chief of UA Comix, as well as artists Lyudmila Samus and Khrystyna Koropetska.

Presented by John Beauchamp and Katarzyna Jagodzińska, head of the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków.