As a representative of Korfanty's Institute for Polish Thought I would like to introduce to all of you our most innovative initiative - Mobile Digitaization Center. What is it and what is it's goal you can see in a brief video-presentation available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR1K0hAlRWg
From the very first moment when we've heard about Wiki Loves Living Heritage we wanted to apply some part of our activity to the project. As we believe that all of us gathered here share a great amount of values, beliefs and creativity we want to inspire by your actions and maybe give you an occasion to be inspired by some of our activities.
In the second part of the year we will focus our Mobile Digitization Center's efforts on living heritage in Poland, that some of it is already part of the UNESCO initiative. We identified four interesting topics to cover:
1. Efforts of local, mostly rural communities devoted to celebrate harvesting efforts known in Poland as "Dożynki" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do%C5%BCynki
2. Living heritage on the example of local rite of tearing the feathers - process celebrated by rural people on the countryside https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darcie_pierza - there is no english version of wiki-site
3. All Saint's Day in Poland - preparations and celebrations of this special time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints%27_Day
4. Miner's celebrations of the Saint Barbara's Cult connected with a special fest - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Barbara#Central_Europe
Those topics are important examples of polish living heritage still availaible to cover but as we observe it - it might not take a very long time to observe it disappear from our society's lifestyles. I have to say that we are very fortunate to be able to digitize both tangible and intangible cultural heritage using our Mobile Digitization Center and I hope that it will be an inspiration for all our us and a beginning for new, multicultural projects in the future.