A Two-Day Symposium
Urban Legacies:
Culture-in-Practice and Public Policies in East-Central Europe
At the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, L’viv, Ukraine
Fri 18 and Saturday 19 September 2015
This two-day Symposium promises a rare and stimulating direct engagement between
cultural policymakers, practitioners and academics from and dealing with the EastCentral European region.
Over two days of formal and informal discussions, theory and practice will be brought
into dialogue, and experiences from cultural functionaries in three key cities will be
compared, contrasted, and shared. The central theme is how to deal with
multicultural urban legacies in the present, using the cites of L’viv, Wrocław,
Timisoara and Cluj as case studies.
This event is the third in a series organised as part of a wider research project at the
University of Oxford, which examines how identities in the region have been formed
and contested using an innovative definition of ‘sub-cultures’
(http://subcultures.ox.ac.uk). It is sponsored by the Co-funded by the Arts and
Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom and CEELBAS
(www.ceelbas.ac.uk), with additional support from the L’viv Center for Urban
History of East Central Europe (www.lvivcenter.org).
Further information: robert.pyrah[AT]history.ox.ac.uk
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DRAFT Programme (Subject to amendments):
DAY ONE
FRIDAY 18 SEPTEMBER 2015
10:30 Registration + coffee
10:45 Introduction and Welcome
(Sofia DYAK, Jan FELLERER, Robert PYRAH, Marius TURDA)
11:00 PANEL ONE: Cultural Activism
Speakers:
 To include two Theatre and Festival Organisers from L’viv

One from Wrocław in Contemporary Arts

And a cultural activist from Cluj
Chair / Discussant:
Academic, University of Wrocław
13:00 Lunch
14:00 PANEL TWO: Culture and City Institutions
Speakers:
L’viv Book Forum (NGO) & L’viv City of Literature (initiative)
From the Ossolineum (Wrocław), working in L’viv
Representative from Timisoara’s bid for European Capital of Culture 2021
Artistic Director, Wrocław European Cultural Capital 2016
http://wroclaw2016.pl/qwdqwd/
Chair / Discussant:
Academic, Center for Humanities, Lviv University
16:00 Coffee break
PANEL THREE: Culture and Politics - dialogum mobile
17:00 [Move to theatre venue – public event]
Ukrainian MP Ira Podolyak (L’viv and Kyiv)
interviews activist and artist Sasha Roitburt
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
Moderated by an leading international academic
Note: a multimedia public event.
18:30 Reception and canapés (in same space)
20:00 Finish
DAY TWO
SATURDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 2015
09:30 Coffee
10:00 PANEL FOUR: Cultural Legacies and International Institutions
Speakers:
Representative from Austrian cultural institutions

Representative from the British Council in Kyiv

GiZ representatives (TBC)

Representative from German cultural institutions in Wrocław (TBC)
Chair / Discussant
Cultural Strategist 2015, Kyiv, ex-Soros Centre
11:30 Coffee
11:45 ROUND TABLE (plus canapé lunch): a selection of prominent academics
including Prof. Zdzisław MACH, Jagiellonian University, Kraków)
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Notes for panelists:
Each panel is informal, but the participants will be invited to talk about the theme of
the conference – how they deal with or confront the question of multicultural urban
legacies in the present in their work.
Each will speak for approx. 5-10 minutes, giving a brief case study and examples
from their practical work. To help structure the presentations, we propose some basic
questions to be addressed.
For the CULTURAL panels:



What urban legacies do you see, experience and confront in your city of work?
How you envisage dealing with them in the future?
Please provide a short illustrated case study from your field of work
(feel free to use illustrative visual aids, ideally via PowerPoint)
For the INSTITUTIONAL panel:




What's your understanding of a public policy?
How does this translate to the fields of ‘urban’ and ‘culture’?
How do you address the question of multiculturality in your work?
Please provide some case studies that illustrate this
(feel free to use illustrative visual aids, ideally via PowerPoint)
For the ROUND TABLE panelists:


Please make summative comments (c.5-10 minutes each) on what you have
heard, pertaining to the key question of the conference, drawing on your
disciplinary perspective and experience by way of comparison and enrichment
Consider particularly how our academic knowledge intersects with the
practical cases we have heard
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