Without a Mask. Workshop in the Arctic - Identitas Foundation competition

Six Polish authors, aged 25 to 41, will participate in a workshop in the winter of 2021/2022 at a base five hundred kilometres beyond the Arctic Circle. The Uløya Island base will provide unparalleled conditions for reflection and creative work. The competition and workshops entitled Without a Mask. Workshops in the Arctic for Polish humanists, writers, philosophers and historians are announced by the Identitas Foundation.

Since 2014, the Identitas Foundation has been providing humanists with scholarships and, as part of the Identitas Prize, annually awards the authors of the best Polish book of the year with a financial prize ranging from PLN 20 to 80 k. The award, which is complemented by workshops and the Identitas Special Prize, will be complemented by the promotion of works by workshop participants conducted by the Foundation and its partners.

- 'A great number of contemporary works by Polish authors are not hermetic. They deserve more attention and support, both from the public institutions set up for this purpose and from privately funded projects, so important in many "old" European countries, but still so scarce in Poland,' - convince the competition organisers.

They believe that the cultural continuity, which has been so seriously damaged in Poland and Central and Eastern Europe, needs to be taken care of. - 'Literature is one of the most important, most diverse and most sublime foundations of this continuity, even if it is no longer the most popular,' they emphasise. - 'At the same time, works in the broadly defined humanities, from fiction to non-fiction and reportage, are often carriers of novelty and originality both in literary trends and, more broadly, in the description of the understanding of reality and the changes taking place in it.'.

The previous Identitas Award winners and nominees include: Marta Kwaśnicka, Beata Halicka, Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz, Maciej Pieprzyca, Jan Polkowski, Ryszard Kaczmarek, Krzysztof Koehler, Bogdan Podgórski, Marcin Cielecki, Radek Rak, Anna Janko, Agnieszka Kołakowska, Natalia Jarska, Stanisław Waltoś, Paweł Rojek, Marcin Makowski, Kazimierz Orłoś, Mariusz Urbanek and Przemysław Dakowicz.

The workshops, lasting from 7 to 9 days, will take place in the winter of 2021/2022 in a resort on the Arctic island of Uloya. During them in the Arctic, a team of experts will conduct classes with the nominees on the impact on new Polish narratives of forms of separation that are particularly visible today - whether due to pandemic masks or deepening cultural and worldview fractures. The Uløya base, five hundred kilometres from the Arctic Circle, will provide unparalleled conditions for reflection and creative work.

The Identitas Award(s) will be announced between 30.12.2021 and 30.04.2022.

The Foundation accepts applications, from the authors themselves, as well as from publishing houses operating in the Republic of Poland, academics, editors-in-chief of scientific, cultural, political and social magazines and programmes, and non-governmental organisations active in the sphere of culture and the Board of the Foundation.

The deadline for submission of authors is 08.10.2021. The Identitas Workshop will take place thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture, National Heritage and Sport.

Rules and information: www.identitas.pl

Photo T.Kazmierowski, Uløya, 2020 In the photo the nominees for the Identitas 2020 Award: from right Marcin Cielecki, Radek Rak, Paweł Rzewuski, Marcelina Szumer-Brysz, Tomasz Herbach and Marcin Makowski.

Ewa K.Cichocka / Press Office UG