Polonia Global Fund

The Youth Culture House of Rybnik, Poland announces its 9th Annual international Art Competition on the theme “The Great Well-Known and Unknown.”

This year’s topic focuses on “Velázquez – The King’s painter and the Painters’ Prince”

The annual competition’s aims are:

• To present the creativity of children and teenagers;
• To popularize art history and to familiarize participants with the great artists;
• To share artistic and methodological experiences;
• To develop children’s sensitivity to art.

Our journey has lasted for 9 years. Many of you have accompanied us from the beginning. Leaving Paris of the first half of XXth century behind, we move to VIIIth century Spain with presentations on Diego Velázquez, his life and creative output.

In his works, the great painter showed the wonderful, baroque, Spanish court, a society in an age full of contrast, the mysticism of religious ecstasy, the pathos of history, and the beauty of nature. This genius of art and intellect was an unequalled master of colour and the painter’s vision of reality. Loftiness alternates invariably with simplicity in his poetical paintings.

We expect that you present the places and historical epoch in which he worked, people whom he encountered and by whom he was befriended, his models, studios, teachers, patrons – everything he lived during his 61 years, passing from his modest beginning as a painter in Sevilla painter to his becoming an outstanding nobleman of Spanish court, and king’s painter.

Please do not copy the artist’s works. Rather, let them be an inspiration for your own works.

Participants aged 5 to 21 may enter in the following groupings:

1. Up to age 7,
2. Ages 8 – 11,
3. Ages 12 – 15 and,
4. Ages 16 – 21

Works may range from a minimum of 30 x 42 cm to a maximum of 70 x 100 cm

Works may be paintings, drawings, graphics, or mixed.

The deadline for entry is March 31st, 2009.

All works should be clearly signed on the back and should contain the following information:

• Author’s full name and age
• Institution’s address, telephone and E-mail address
• Teacher’s full name
• The title of the work

Please do not frame works!

An awards ceremony and exhibition will take place on May 25th, 2009 in Rybnik, Poland.

The organisers will inform all the authors of awarded works by E-mail or telephone.

Works should be sent to:

MŁODZIEŻOWY DOM KULTURY
UL. BRONIEWSKIEGO 23
44 – 217 RYBNIK POLSKA

For more information please call: (032) 42 24 088, (032) 42 15 155 or E-mail the organizers.

The competition is organised under the honorary patronage of the mayor of Rybnik.

All the works can be sent back at the request of the institution and at its own expense within 10 months from the exhibition. After this period all the works will remain at the institution of the organizer.

MŁODZIEŻOWY DOM KULTURY W RYBNIKU
Serdecznie zaprasza do udziału w
IX EDYCJI KONKURSU „WIELCY ZNANI I NIEZNANI”

Tegorocznym tematem jest: „VELÁZQUEZ – MALARZ KRÓLÓW, KSIĄŻĘ MALARZY“

CELE:

• prezentacja możliwości twórczych dzieci i młodzieży,
• popularyzacja wiedzy z zakresu historii sztuki i przybliżenie uczestnikom sylwetek wielkich artystów,
• wymiana doświadczeń plastycznych , metodycznych, estetycznych,
• rozwijanie wrażliwości artystycznej młodego pokolenia.

TEMATYKA PRAC:

Nasza podróż po świecie trwa już od 9 lat. Część z Was towarzyszy nam od początku. Zostawiając w tyle Paryż z początku XX-wieku przenosimy się w tym roku do XVII-wiecznej Hiszpanii. Tym razem planujemy poznać i pokazać sylwetkę, życie i dorobek artystyczny Diego Velázqueza.

Wielki sewilczyk pokazał w swojej sztuce wspaniały barokowy dwór hiszpański, społeczeństwo epoki pełnej kontrastów, mistycyzm religijnych uniesień, patos historii i piękno przyrody. Ten geniusz sztuki i intelektu, Król Malarzy był niedoścignionym mistrzem koloru i malarskiego widzenia rzeczywistości. W jego poetyckich obrazach przeplatają się niezmienni wzniosłość i prostota.

Oczekujemy, że pokażecie miejsca i epokę historyczną, w której tworzył, ludzi z którymi się stykał i przyjaźnił, jego modeli, pracownie, nauczycieli, mecenasów – wszystko co przeżył na przestrzeni 61 lat przechodząc od skromnej pozycji sewilskiego malarza do wybitnego szlachcica hiszpańskiego dworu i nadwornego portrecisty króla.

NIE KOPIUJCIE OBRAZÓW ARTYSTY – niech pozostaną dla was wyłącznie inspiracją dla tworzenia własnych pięknych prac!!!

WIEK UCZESTNIKÓW: 5 – 21 LAT
Grupy wiekowe: (do 7 lat), (8-11 lat), (12-15 lat), (16-21 lat)

FORMAT PRAC: min. 30×42 cm – max 70×100 cm

TECHNIKA: malarstwo, rysunek, grafika, techniki mieszane (płaskie)

TERMIN DOSTARCZENIA PRAC: 31 marca 2009

Prace powinny być czytelnie opisane na odwrocie i zawierać następujące dane:

• imię i nazwisko autora, wiek autora,
• adres, e-mail i telefon placówki,
• imię i nazwisko instruktora lub nauczyciela,
• tytuł pracy

UROCZYSTE PODSUMOWANIE KONKURSU, ROZDANIE NAGRÓD WYRÓŻNIEŃ I DYPLOMÓW ORAZ OTWARCIE WYSTAWY POKONKURSOWEJ ODBĘDZIE SIĘ 25 MAJA 2009

WSZYSCY LAUREACI ZOSTANĄ POWIADOMIENI PRZEZ ORGANIZATORA LISTOWNIE LUB TELEFONICZNIE.

Adres:

MŁODZIEŻOWY DOM KULTURY
UL. BRONIEWSKIEGO 23,
44-217 RYBNIK, Polska

tel. 0-32 4215155, fax: 0-32 4224088,
E-mail

Konkurs pod HONOROWYM PATRONATEM PREZYDENTA MIASTA RYBNIKA

Prace nadesłane na konkurs będą mogły być odebrane na wyraźne życzenie i koszt placówki w przeciągu 10 miesięcy od zakończenia wystawy. Po tym czasie wszystkie prace przechodzą na własność organizatora.

Four years ago, I first began filming Irena Sendler in Warsaw where she lives in a medical home. At 94, she still remembered how she and her friends in the Polish resistance risked torture and death to resue thousands of Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto. This is their story — Mary Skinner, Producer and Director of “In the Name of Their Mothers.”

In the Name of Their Mothers is the film chronicling the work of Irena and her compatriots in Żegota. An advance screening of the film was held on Wednesday, November 12th at CREEES – Stanford University.

To learn more about the film and to view clips visit the film’s website.

More information about Irena is available at Life in a Jar:

In the fall of 1999, a rural Kansas teacher encouraged four students to work on a year long National History Day project which would among other things; extend the boundaries of the classroom to families in the community, contribute to history learning, teach respect and tolerance, and meet our classroom motto, “He who changes one person, changes the world entire”.

Students from rural Kansas, discover a Catholic woman, who saved Jewish children. Few had heard of Irena Sendlerowa in 1999, now after 250 presentations of Life in a Jar, a web site with huge usage and world-wide media attention, Irena is known to the world. How did this beautiful story develop?/blockquote>

Via Poland in the Rockies, Wanda Koscia’s film, Battle for Warsaw will be shown in the following locations starting October 19th:

• Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 19, 2:30pm, Mississauga Central Library, Noel Ryan Auditorium, 301 Burnhamthorpe Road
• Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 20, 6:30pm, University of Toronto, Emmanuel College, 75 Queen’s Park Crescent, Room 001
• Chicago, October 22, 7:00pm, The Chopin Theater, 1543 W Division St., Chicago, IL 60642
• Montreal, Quebec, Canada, October 26, 2:00pm, De Sève Cinema, Concordia University, 1400 de Maisonneuve West

Born in London of Polish parents, Wanda Koscia is a Producer/Director specializing in history and current affairs for the BBC. For over two decades she worked extensively across the former Soviet bloc on a number of major television series, including: The Struggles for Poland (1985), The Other Europe (1988), The Hand of Stalin. Leningrad (1989), The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1990), Death of Yugoslavia (1995), Tourists of the Revolution (1998). Other credits include Intelligence to Please part of Discovery series Why Intelligence Fails (2004) and several years on the BBC flagship history program, Timewatch. Also at the BBC she made over three hours of documentary films to accompany Dunkirk, a major factual drama. Her interviews were then made into an award winning documentary: The Soldiers Story. In 2005 she made a film about the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 (featuring an interview with her own mother who was a participant aged 16). The Battle of Warsaw was shown on Discovery Europe and the BBC. In the mid 1980s, Wanda spent a year at Radio Free Europe working in the Research Department’s Underground Publications Unit. During the 1980s she was active in the Solidarity support group in London.

The Polish economy grew by 6.9 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2004, official figures showed Wednesday.

The growth was above expectations and marked the fastest pace of gross domestic product development in seven years.
Economists said they now expected Poland to grow at a year-on-year rate of around 6 percent for the full year.

Poland, with a population of nearly 40 million, is as big as all the other nine countries combined, which also joined the European Union May 1.

Economic growth is heavily export driven with Poland’s main markets being in the older members of the European Union such as Germany and France.

Strong growth in the Polish economy has heightened expectations of interest rate hikes from the central bank, which has already indicated it is concerned about the prospect of the economy overheating. Poland needs strong growth to help bring down an unemployment rate which stands at around 20 percent.

© United Press International

PGF, as part of its mission to build international understanding and acceptance, believes that good international relations are founded upon mutual respect, tolerance, and a fair-deal.

To that end PGF encourages you to write to your elected representatives in support of visa free status for Polish nationals. Poland, a good and trusted friend of the United States in the center of Europe, is still faced with Cold War era travel obstacles. While most European citizens are free to travel to and from the United States without visas, Polish citizens must procure expensive visas often spending weeks away from family and friends to do so. This system is patently unjust especially in light of Poland’s long history of support for the United States and for freedom.

Let your voice be heard. Contact your local Congressperson or your Senator.