This is the last Debrief from The First News at the Polish Press Agency. As you may or may not know, TFN is set to close its doors to the public, with this podcast along with it.

Before I say goodbye, some statistics!

Along with this episode, we have a grand total of 197 episodes of The Debrief over a span just exceeding four years, with a total of over 17,300 downloads at the end of January 2024. And where are you all? Well, the majority of you are in Poland, but also in the USA, UK, Sweden, Germany, Canada and Australia. Plus many more…

I would like to thank the team at TFN for their support, and who knows, maybe the Debrief will return in one way or another. Also my thanks to you dear listeners for tuning in over the years.

Many thanks for listening and do take care of yourselves. Do usłyszenia!

John Beauchamp

In this episode of The Debrief we take a look at the like and times of Jerzy Sosnkowski, brother of the illustrious general Kazimierz Sosnkowski.

A new book about Sosnokowski shows how we was an accomplised architect, illustrator and artist, as well as a fiction writer and magazine editor. Yet despite this, he has remained out of public discourse, perhaps overshadowed by his brother, General Kazimierz Sosnkowski. Why is this?

In this episode of The Debrief, John Beauchamp speaks to Dariusz Błaszczyk, the author of a new book on Jerzy Sosnkowski.

Thanks to the power of the internet meme, Polish has risen to the ranks of near legendary status for being obscenely difficult. But one Polish language teacher has set her sights on Instagram to make learning Polish that little bit easier.

In this episode, John Beauchamp speaks to Julia Pilarska-Ciołek, the mastermind behind PlaPla Polish on Instagram and her school of Polish for foreigners.

We talk to cultural anthropologist and activist Ewa Chomicka from the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

How do museums stay relevant? How can participatory methods actually enrich a museum’s narrative? One such project is a voluntary choir which was set up by the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which lasted for almost 10 years.

What else can museums do to remain relevant and maintain social dialogue? Host John Beauchamp speaks to Ewa Chomicka for this last episode of 2023.

In this episode, we hear from the head of the Praga Museum about what it means to be from this slightly rough around the edges, yet vibrant and often overlooked district of Warsaw.

John Beauchamp speaks to Katarzyna Kuzko-Zwierz about the Praga branch of the Museum of Warsaw about its new exhibition on exceptional women from the “right bank” of Warsaw.

Kasia Kuzko also explains how the museum engages with local communities, providing a space for creativity and social cohesion.

More details from the museum can be found here and on their Facebook page here.

In this episode of The Debrief, we take a look at digital accessibility in the social sphere, especially culture and the arts.

Host John Beauchamp speaks to Maja Drabczyk, the head of the Centrum Cyfrowe, a digital foundation which advocates for better accessibility, public engagement and openness in the digital world.

More information may be found here.

In the latest Debrief, we’re down in Kraków meeting a very special artist who has made a name for herself in creating the most colourful and inventive ecological protests across Poland and Europe. 

Join John Beauchamp as he visits Cecylia Malik at home in Kraków, a hive of activity where art and social activism collide. We speak about her ongoing major ecological happening, Sisters of the River, and how art can play a role in raising environmental awareness.

In the above picture, Cecylia Malik shows the boat symbolising the Vistula and her tributaries. Below, the river skirt Cecylia mentions in the interview.

The golden era of Polish comic books started in the 1960s. Today its popularity has reached momentum with a whole array of titles being translated to foreign languages.

The Comic Book Museum, the first such institution in Poland, is now taking shape in Kraków. It started operations in 2021 in a temporary space consisting of a small gallery and research room filled with books on comic art, historic comics and artefacts related to comic heroes.

Its members have organised comic book exhibitions, including a major retrospective held at the National Museum in Kraków in 2018.

Host John Beauchamp meets Artur Wabik, a visual artist specialising in murals and graffiti. Wabik is a comic book collector, curator and occasionally also a comic script writer. Since 2020 he has been a board member of the Comic Books Museum Foundation, whose collection includes 40,000 items related to the history of comic books in Poland.

You can check out our TFN article on the museum here. Follow Comic Book Museum Facebook page to learn more on prospective exhibitions, workshops, meetings with comic artists and writers, and other events.

For this Debrief Extra we’re on a journey through photographic history at an exhibition entitled “Lithuania. Two Centuries of Photography”.

From old, yellowish photos from the 19th century to the brand new digital projects. From the times when Lithuania belonged to the Russian Tsarist empire to the modern independent state.

We speak to Nikodem Szczygłowski while visiting the exhibition, which is on at the International Cultural Centre in Kraków until 29 October 2023.

More info can be found here.

A new report published by Warsaw’s Kozminski University shows that women in Polish higher education institutions are having a tough time breaking through to higher academic posts.

Host John Beauchamp speaks to the author of the report, Adjunct Professor Dr Anna Górska from Department of the Human Resource Management at Kozminski University.

Górska learnt about the working conditions for female researchers from Poland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Croatia and Romania. It emerged that from the perspective of female researchers, meritocracy at universities is virtually non-existent and women are constantly subjected to discrimination.

More about Dr Anna Górska may be found here.