The Polish Year in Israel is a joint venture launched by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Starting from the spring of 2008 through the spring of 2009, there will be presented various projects connected with different aspects of culture, science as well as tourism and economy. The organization responsible for the project is the Adam Mickiewicz Institute – a governmental institution which aims at promoting Polish culture abroad and cooperates on cultural projects with countries all over the world.

The main objective of the Polish Year in Israel is to bring together Polish and Israeli societies by strengthening cultural and economic contacts as well as contacts on a tourist and scientific level. Moreover, the venture is aimed at starting long-term cooperation between the institutions of both countries.

Another important goal set by the project’s managers is reaching the public who have not been interested in Polish culture so far or associated Poland only with the dramatic events of the Holocaust. With a view to change this attitude, the Institute, within the last year and a half, has invited 100 Israeli managers of culture and journalists. During such visits they could learn that Poland is considered to be an important member of the European Union as a dynamic country with a huge potential in education, tourism, science and technology. Moreover, the country can offer many possibilities in terms of a modern culture which is deeply rooted in a national, multicultural tradition with Polish-Israeli relations as its integral part.

The visits of our Israeli partners to Poland and the established cooperation projects prove best an enormous interest in Polish culture among Israelis. The Polish Year in Israel enhances an excellent chance to change the conventional and often wrong perception of Poland both, in Israeli and among the diaspora all over the world. Therefore, it is crucial for the success of the venture to select projects which are among Israelis’ interests and, not avoiding talks about the past, place an emphasis to present the modern culture as giving new possibilities of reaching a mutual understanding.

The details on the Polish Year in Israel venture, which emerged as a result of the cooperation with our Israeli partners, are provided on the project website www.poland-israel.org . The website serves as the most important communication and promoting tool for the Polish Year in Israel 2008/2009. A modern graphics of the project and its three language versions (Polish, English, Hebrew) are expected to draw the attention of people from many different countries and get them interested in the Polish culture presented in Israel.


Abridged film on this project:

Polish version

Hebrew version



The office of the Polish Year in Israel, Tel Aviv
Coordinator - Katarzyna Wielga
kwielga@iam.pl

Contact