Let’s talk about Poland – which is building bridges in a fractured world

My train from Krakow, the cultural capital of Poland, reached Suwalki, a city 600 km away in the north of the country, in the afternoon. After having travelled through some picturesque Polish countryside, I climbed down from the train on the platform lugging my luggage. I heaved a long sigh. There weren’t many people around. I was going to Krasnogruda in the borderland village of Sejny on a two-week residency.

The letter from the Borderland Foundation, which was hosting me, said their driver would be waiting for me. There was none. I waited outside the station. There was no driver. I panicked. But he pulled in after 15 minutes, apologised in his broken English, and tucked my boxes into the boot of his car.

I remembered the line in the mail from the Foundation. ‘Please buy groceries on the way. The nearest shop to the Foundation is ten kilometres away.’

The driver knew it, it seemed. He stopped at a Biedronka (a supermarket chain named after ladybird). I bought tomatoes, sausages, oil, meat and some leaves. I sat deep in the car’s back seat, and the driver, barely speaking, drove off towards Krasnogruda, which was 30 kilometres away. For the next two weeks, I would be staying at the Borderland Foundation on my residency to work on a book, supported by the Polish Institute New Delhi.

Here, in the village of Sejny, where Polish, Lithuanian, and Belarusian cultures have intermingled for centuries, the Borderland Foundation has been quietly orchestrating one of Europe’s most ambitious experiments in cultural reconciliation. For over three decades, this small but determined organisation has been proving that dialogue, not division, can be the defining characteristic of borderlands—those liminal spaces where different worlds meet and, if we’re fortunate, learn to understand one another.

In the remote northeastern corner of Poland, where the borders of the three countries converge like tributaries feeding a single river, stands a manor house that has become something far more extraordinary than its modest appearance might suggest. The Krasnogruda estate, once home to the family of Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz, now serves as the International Centre for Dialogue—a guiding light of hope in an era increasingly defined by division and discord.

The visionaries

The story begins in 1990, in the aftermath of communism’s collapse, when four young artists dared to imagine something unprecedented. Krzysztof Czyżewski and Małgorzata Sporek-Czyżewska, along with their colleagues from the avant-garde theatre movements of “Gardzienice” and “Stop”, arrived in Sejny with a radical proposition: that this small town, with its rich multicultural history, could become a laboratory for a new kind of coexistence.

Krzysztof Czyżewski, born in Warsaw in 1958 and educated in Polish literature at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, brought with him a deep understanding of theatre’s power to transform communities. His work with the avant-garde ‘Gardzienice’ Theatre from 1977 to 1983, during Poland’s martial law period, had taught him that culture could be a form of resistance—not just against political oppression, but against the very forces that separate human beings from one another.

Together with his partner, Małgorzata Sporek-Czyżewska, who now serves as the Foundation’s director, Czyżewski began the painstaking work of cultural archaeology. They chose Sejny precisely because it was “similar to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, in that both places have a multicultural history, but despite this similarity Vilnius lacked a very important factor: an organisation that was attempting to provide the needed platform to share the stories and history that had nearly been erased during the two totalitarian occupations”.

A Poetic Inheritance

The Foundation’s acquisition of the Krasnogruda manor carries profound symbolic weight. The estate, with its earliest references dating from the mid-seventeenth century, was connected from the late eighteenth century until World War II with the Eysmont and Kunat families. Czesław Miłosz’s mother was Weronika née Kunat, making this the Nobel laureate’s ancestral home.

Miłosz, who spent his life navigating between languages, cultures, and historical traumas, understood better than most that identity need not be a prison. His poetry explored the possibility of belonging to multiple worlds simultaneously, of finding home in the spaces between fixed categories. The Borderland Foundation has made this poetic vision into a living practice.

A Cultural Resistance

The physical transformation of Sejny tells the story of the Foundation’s broader mission. The “Borderland” revitalised the Jewish quarter in the very centre of the town, establishing studios for art and education programmes in the former Hebrew gymnasium, while also making use of the town’s former synagogue (the white synagogue). This isn’t mere restoration—it’s resurrection, bringing life back to spaces that had been emptied by history’s cruellest chapters.

Since its establishment in 1990, the Foundation has built an impressive library of world-class resources on multiculturalism, and operates the Borderland Publishing House, which has gained recognition for issuing titles, including historian Jan Thomas Gross’s book on the pogrom of Jews in Jedwabne, entitled “Sąsiedzi” (Neighbours). The publishing house has introduced Polish readers to a host of East-Central European authors, creating new bridges between literary traditions.

The Foundation also produces the remarkably detailed “Almanach Sejneński,” a publication that serves as both historical record and cultural compass for the region. This attention to local specificity—to the particular stories, traditions, and memories that make each place unique—reflects the Foundation’s understanding that authentic universalism must be rooted in the particular.

The International Centre for Dialogue

The restored manor and park of Krasnogruda serve as the foundation for long-term activities that have established the International Centre for Dialogue. Its activities bring living culture into dialogue with the region’s rich heritage, bridging different generations, languages, and worldviews.

The Centre operates with a sophisticated understanding of dialogue as both art and necessity. Rather than promoting a shallow multiculturalism that reduces differences to colourful costumes and exotic foods, the Foundation engages with the difficult work of genuine encounter. They understand that real dialogue requires not just tolerance but genuine curiosity, not just coexistence but mutual transformation.

The Foundation’s general aim is “the development of a new civic formation which both knows and respects the tradition and history of their place of residence, their ‘little homeland,’ and which also creates an open society, respecting otherness”. This delicate balance—between rootedness and openness, between local loyalty and universal values—represents one of the most sophisticated approaches to cultural work in contemporary Europe.

A Grand Vision

The Foundation’s work extends far beyond Sejny, reaching into multicultural regions around the world including Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Using years of experience in working on different borderlands, the Foundation aims to initiate and expand a movement of Bridge Builders—people committed to promoting a modern ethos of commonality based on dialogue and interdependence.

The vision encompasses the education of new cultural leaders and the creation of an international network of people who share the Foundation’s belief in culture as an agent of social change. The approach is both practical and philosophical, recognising that cultural work requires both local knowledge and global perspective.

From its very foundation, one of the aims of the Borderland Centre in Sejny and the International Centre for Dialogue in Krasnogruda has been sharing its everyday practices in a way that could be translated into other cultural contexts, consistently developing a network of international partners. This network includes collaborations with academic communities in the United States and beyond, with Czyżewski regularly participating in symposia, seminars, and meetings that spread the Borderland model to new contexts.

Contemporary Relevance

The Foundation’s work has taken on new urgency in the face of recent global crises. Over the years, the Borderland Foundation has been committed to programmes integrating Ukrainians and Ukrainian culture into broader world conversations: through guest fellowships, workshops, an annual summer school, art, and music. During the current war, they have expanded their role to invite and host Ukrainians, not only in their own region, but with the help of partners, throughout Poland.

I met a wonderful Ukranian sound artist, Grumet-Olszanski Volodymyr, who joined me as a fellow resident at the Foundation. Volodymyr, who runs Audiostories in his hometown Lyiv, produces audiobooks. Passionate about poetry, and sounds of the nature, Volodymyr joined me in the kitchen as we cooked some fusion food. On weekends when there was no staff at the Foundation, Volodymy and I went walking around Krosnogruda, feeling the cold breeze in our face.

The Foundation has transformed its current residency programme, originally dedicated to artists, writers, translators, and cultural animators, to serve as temporary shelter for Ukrainian refugees and their families. This rapid adaptation demonstrates the Foundation’s understanding that cultural work must be responsive to immediate human needs, that dialogue and hospitality are not luxuries but necessities.

A Practitioner of Ideas

Czyżewski describes himself as a “practitioner of ideas, writer, philosopher, culture animator, theatre director, editor”. This multifaceted identity reflects the Foundation’s holistic approach to cultural work. They understand that creating genuine dialogue requires not just good intentions but sophisticated practices, not just theoretical understanding but embodied wisdom.

The Foundation’s approach is deeply practical. They work with local schools, organise workshops for young people, host international conferences, maintain archives, publish books, and provide spaces for artists and intellectuals to work and meet. Each activity is designed to contribute to the larger project of creating what they call a “new civic formation”—a way of being in the world that is both locally rooted and globally conscious.

In an era of rising nationalism, increasing polarisation, and the apparent failure of many international institutions, the Borderland Foundation offers a different model. They demonstrate that it is possible to honour local traditions while remaining open to others, to maintain cultural identity while embracing change, to be patriotic without being xenophobic.

Their work suggests that the future belongs not to those who build walls but to those who build bridges, not to those who retreat into cultural fortresses but to those who create spaces for genuine encounter. In the small town of Sejny, in the manor house where Czesław Miłosz’s family once lived, a group of dedicated individuals continues to prove that dialogue is not just possible but necessary, not just idealistic but practical.

The Borderland Foundation stands as a testament to the power of culture to heal, to connect, and to transform. In a world that often seems determined to divide itself into irreconcilable camps, they continue to insist on the possibility of understanding, the necessity of dialogue, and the transformative power of genuine encounter.

As we face an uncertain future, marked by climate change, migration, technological disruption, and geopolitical tensions, the work of the Borderland Foundation becomes ever more relevant. They remind us that our survival as a species may depend not on our ability to defeat our enemies but on our capacity to understand our neighbours, not on our power to dominate but on our willingness to dialogue.

In the end, the Borderland Foundation’s greatest achievement may be this: they have shown that it is possible to create islands of understanding in an ocean of misunderstanding, spaces of dialogue in a world of monologue, communities of hope in a time of despair. Their work continues, day by day, conversation by conversation, building the bridges that our fractured world so desperately needs.

My two weeks at Krasnogruda, meeting fellow residents from Ukraine, Croatia, Poland and the US, and interacting with Czyżewski helped me understand the need for dialogue between cultures, between people, and the need to break free of parochial mindset.

Krasnogruda was quiet where even silence had sound. If you listen, you hear the cultures speak the language of reconciliation.

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