Marcin Skrzypek

This text is an introduction to my report Intercultural Animation and Crisis Resilience¹ (in Polish²), which was developed as part of the 2023 Lublin City Mayor’s Fellowship. The report describes the benefits of building an intercultural social capital based on the example of grassroots humanitarian aid to refugee families from Ukraine in 2022.

In fact my report boils down to the thesis that so-called “being a human” is not and cannot be a coincidence, independent of our will just like sunny weather, but it requires working on ourselves and on society. We succeeded in this “being” in 2022 so it is well worth reflecting about work that has led us to this success, in order to continue developing it in a conscious way. We know how to be effective when it comes to tangible profits, but being human still seems to be something too ephemeral (romantic? shameful? unserious?) to be subject to the rules of effectiveness. Public aid for Ukraine has given this ephemerality a particular shape. Let us therefore try to change our irresponsible approach to humanity, as actions and circumstances which make it increasingly difficult for us to humans are multiplying.

Multicultural animation and social capital

Already more than 10 years ago, back in times of prosperity, people said that development potential based on human capital is on the verge of being exploited and further development may continue only through social capital. Unfortunately it remained more of a theory than practice, as there is a lack of the methodology for building social capital. Meanwhile new circumstances, which experts call polycrisis, came along, in which the social capital has become even more important because it could protect us from disasters which administrative authorities will not be able to deal with.

We could have experienced it on our own after the war in Ukraine broke out. Mass immigration of refugees – mainly women with children – was luckily under control in Poland, only thanks to self-organisation and cooperation. It is worthwhile to draw conclusions from this situation. It turned out that social capital is not an abstraction, but a useful power, which has its own sources and mechanisms. It isworth showing and being able to use them in the future.

Undoubtedly, one of the ways to build social capital is intercultural animation, because firstly, it is about building relations and eliminating barriers between people who belong to different cultures. Secondly, like any animation, it unites and enhances people in taking actions for common good. It is a part of socio-cultural animation and in a broader sense of a social pedagogy. Everyone can contribute to intercultural animation. It includes both direct actions such as integration meetings with foreigners, as well as indirect actions like putting intercultural meanings and symbols in public spaces..

All of them together create a climate of social acceptance for human diversity, of which we need to increasingly be aware of in our close neighbourhood. This encourages foreigners to live together with us and, thanks to that, we have even more, completely natural opportunities for intercultural contacts. In this way, intercultural animation creates a feedback with a real increase in the multiculturalism of society.

Summary

While planning the report, I assumed that the grassroots support for refugee women in Lublin was better than in other cities, as its society through three decades of intercultural animation worked out an exceptionally positive approach towards foreigners and an ability to efficiently organise itself. My assumption turned out to be false, but only because these dependencies are more complex than stereotypically expected.

The decisive moment of the aiding campaign for Ukraine was the very beginning of the war. The number of people who reacted that time was minimal percentage-wise, but it was enough so the refugee women did not gather on the border. On the other hand, the number was so small that it didn’t leave the safety margin. If there had been only 1000-2000 fewer people for instance in Lublin in the first days of the war, the accumulation of refugee families without help could have caused such a pile-up of logistical problems that the only solution would have been to build tent or container camps for them and the whole story could have turned out much less happily.

It seems that this helping mechanism was very sensitive to small oscillations of the number of helping people in the scale so small that it was comparable to the carefully estimated absolute number of creators and recipients of intercultural animation. It could be assumed that they are characterised by, higher than in the rest of society, determination to quick reaction and similar circumstances and that’s why their presence – although their low number – was a necessary condition of success of humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

False assumptions

In addition to that, three subjective reasons induced me to consider Lublin as a “pioneer” of this aid. The first one was my own intercultural activities in Lublin: in the Orchestra of Saint Nicholas (since 1992) and in the “Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre” Centre (since 1998). Second one were observations of aid activities of the private centre Liliowa 5, and Lublin Social Committee to Aid Ukraine, organised by the Homo Faber association in the Centre for Culture. Third one was the appearance of a slogan in the media, a few weeks after the outbreak of the war, that “a noble impulse of the heart is no longer enough” and the government had to deal with this situation.

Everyone could guess that the purpose of this slogan was to embarrass the authorities with the scale of social involvement. However, meanwhile it turned out that it was depreciated as purely emotional and unreflective, although we all knew that it was well organised and based on a conscious sensitivity to human needs. To ensure that these actions are followed by something more than a platitude about a „noble impulse of the heart”, I have described them in three texts, the first of which contains interviews with the initiators of the Committee and Liloowa 5. Links to these can be found below.

The grant work was to be the final touch of my polemic. It seemed that it is sufficient to compare all data on Lublin’s intercultural activities in the III Republic of Poland with data on aid provided to refugee women even only by the city’s cultural institutions to show the causality between them. Unfortunately, statistics do not allow such comparisons. As I mentioned, the grassroots humanitarian aid, of which we are so proud, was not impressive in terms of numbers, and not only in the Lublin cultural sector, but also in Lublin in general and Poland as a whole.

It put the whole sense of the report up in the air, as the small scale of aid automatically diminished the meaning of intercultural animation as its cause. The defence of the main thesis that without intercultural animation the aid provided to refugee women could have not succeeded required meticulous estimation of this risk, based on incomplete figures. This analysis can be found below. The hardest value to estimate is what influence of intercultural animation on individuals transfers to the results on a social scale. To see the answer for that matter, I refer you to the grant work.

Statistical data

According to the Lublin Social Committee to Aid Ukraine report, by April 2022 in Lublin 1,200,000 citizens of Ukraine had stopped in Lublin, and 138,000 of them spent at least one night there. At the end of March they formed 17% of the local population, which is 68,000 people. However, the Committee itself during three months accommodated “only” 1668 people (513 families). Thus, about 98% of people from refugee families stayed for longer in other places, out of reach of the socio-culturally active environment, which in my information bubble was regarded as the centre aid to Ukraine in Lublin.

Moreover, Lublin itself performed significantly below the expectations in this aspect compared to other cities. According to a study conducted by the Polish Metropolitan Union, the percentage of adults hosting female refugees in their homes here was around 2% (17 persons per 1,000), as in most of the 12 metropolises, but with an average of 3% (27 persons per 1,000), overestimated by Wrocław, Białystok and Gdańsk, where the percentage of such people was 6%, 5% and 4 % respectively. In percentage terms, only Kraków, with 1%, was less likely to host female refugees in their homes.

In general, contrary to the common opinion about massiveness of social humanitarian aid to Ukraine, according to the data of the Polish Central Statistical Office, essential aid, which was transport and accommodation of refugee women, was provided only by 2-3% of households. It is accurate with conclusions of the Association of Polish Cities when it comes to adults – also only 2-3 persons per 100. In my other text Aid to Ukrainian refugees: effects of multicultural animation³ (in Polish) it is possible to get an insight into more detailed data on this matter.

In search of a new interpretation

Such data may cause understandable consternation if we can see causal dependencies in a linear way: we helped a significant number of people, so a plenty of people must have helped, which means that the influence of intercultural animation was also significant. But what if not so many people helped? It is s worth looking at it from a different perspective and asking: why were those 2% of people who were hosting and transporting sufficient after all? We can answer this question if we take into consideration not only summary data of a couple of months, but also the time factor, which is the dynamics of the development of the situation, especially in the first days after the war outbreak.

In fact, more important than the number of people who helped was the fact, how this number spread over this time. The pace of taking care of refugee families as they were coming at the beginning, which was preventing the accumulation of women with children at the border or in roadside car parks, played a crucial role. As a result, neither the army nor police had to take part in this, and the authorities had some time to make preparations in the cities. We don’t have any data on flows of people crossing the border, but we can conclude that a sufficient number of people reacted quickly enough for these flows to spread out in Poland.

Described by me in previously mentioned interviews, the rapid return of Ania and Piotr from Homo Faber to Lublin in order to organise the Committee immediately after the first attacks on Ukrainian cities, illustrate how it was happening in reality. Important was not only the reflex of humanitarian aid leaders, but also background characters such as the neighbour of Olga from Liliowa 5. When Olga hosted in her house first Ukrainian families, children cried so hard that her sons were notable to do their homework or sleep. Fortunately, her neighbour took them in, so Olga could have focused on help and turned her house into a 24-hour accommodation and transit centre.

Great meaning of little numbers

Taking into account the dynamics of the events lets us attribute a great weight to small numbers and precisely shows what was the necessary condition for the success of humanitarian aid: fast mobilisation of lacking resources at the decisive moment. If statistics indicate that few resources were mobilised, then apparently that fewwer missing. The most important thing is that they were not in short supply, as consequences of such a shortage could have turned out to be catastrophic. In other words, the most active 2% of all people who helped, measured after a few months, covered 100% of needs at the critical moment.

Similarly, anti- flood operations are carried out when the key moment is the putting down of the first line of sandbags. This prevents the water from spreading wider and gives time to gather reinforcements. As a result of an effective intervention at the crucial moment, there may not have been much to do afterwards. This is even expected from rapid interventions. However, if those first bags and the first people to put them together had been missing at the very beginning, then later 100 times more of them may not have been enough. At that point, it is always worth asking where those first bags and people came from, to ensure so that they will always be there in the future.

Interviews with organisers of the Committee and Liliowa 5 contributed to answer the question of where all the people who helped refugee women in the first days of the war could come from. Each of these people had years of intercultural, aid and organisational experience. This puts a new complexion on the goals that intercultural animation should serve in order to increase local resilience to crises. We no longer need to expect it to have a mass impact. It is enough that it prepares a kind of social “rapid response forces”. It seems to be more within its capabilities.

Were they the ones who decided that the scale of aid in the first days and weeks of the war was sufficient? That is what we do not know. It would be worth examining a larger group of helpers in this respect. However, this cannot be completely excluded. By doing so, we can estimate the risk of what might have happened without a rapid social response and thus attribute some value to the intercultural animation that such a „rapid reaction force” could have led to.

If these people had been lacking, the number of helpless women with children standing at the border in temperatures below zero would start to rise dramatically. Instead of residents, the services would have taken care of them and they would have ended up up in tents, halls and containers instead of homes. The world’s media would have shown completely different images and we could do nothing about it anymore. One could even calculate with a shortage of how many helpers this could happen.

The butterfly effect

This type of dependency describes the “butterfly effect” which I presented in a broader way in the context of humanitarian aid to Ukraine in the text Local resilience built on social capital⁴ (in Polish). It involves the fact that a tiny- according to the observer’s standards – change in initial conditions results in a huge and uncontrolled change in final conditions.

Regarding the flow of people, most probably we were to experience such a situation during the elections on 15 October 2023. In front of polling stations were huge lines, which had never been seen before. It seemed to indicate “many times higher” voter turnout than usual, which of course was impossible. And In fact, it was 74%, which was 1⁄6 more than in 2019 (about 62%), or 2⁄5 more than in 2007 (about 54%), with slight fluctuations between cities and the provinces.

Assuming that in the previous elections one had to stand for a quarter of an hour in front of a polling station, the increase of about 20-40% in voter turnout resulted in the increase in waiting time by a couple of hours, i.e. hundreds of percent. Now let’s reverse the situation and imagine, by how much would the lines on the border have expanded if the number of refugees had increased by 20-40% as a result of a minimum decrease in the percentage of people who helped at the very beginning of the war?

How can we perceive the role of intercultural animation in this context? First of all, we should take into consideration that aid to the refugee women from Ukraine was sufficient, but barely enough. There was no backup. Thus, everything that could have contributed to this help was a necessary condition for its success. It turns out on a per capita basis that a lack of seemingly insignificant factor such as intercultural animation could have caused dramatic fluctuations. The influence of cultural animation on the course of this aid could be estimated in comparison to the most niche cultural activities.

According to the GUS (Central Statistical Office) the most niche way of participating in culture is going to ballet performances. Usually about 6% of the population goes to see them. Something motivates them to do so. Musical theatres know that establishing such an audience requires many years and sometimes even generations of “dance animation”. Besides, every cultural institution knows the concept of “establishing an audience”, as well as every library knows the concept of “ developing a readership”. Similar processes occur in response to intercultural animation.

If there had not been be enough intercultural animation and the contribution of it to motivating people to help refugee women had been up to 10 times less than that of dance education to a ballet audience, several thousand more unaccompanied people would have turned up at the border crossing. It is not hard to imagine the accompanying accumulation of problems. when even in the Wrocław district of Jagodno during the elections, several hundred pizzas had to be handed out to voters in order to keep them in line until three o’clock in the morning. And yet, at that time, it was just a matter of throwing three tickets into a ballot box, where everyone had an ID and the electoral commission spoke the same language.

Effect of compound interest

Socio-cultural animation works on the principle of compound interest, similarly but reversely to the butterfly effect. It gives a surprisingly great change in final conditions, as after many years of saving, but they don’t come from a one-time slight change in initial conditions as in the butterfly effect, but it is about slight but constant changes spread over a long period of time. Only after combining these two mechanisms explains where the symbolic 2% of people who contributed to aid the most came from.

It is possible that in Lublin among 17 people out of 1000 who, according to the research conducted by the Polish Metropolitan Union, hosted refugee women, 3 of them did it because they “grew up” listening to the Lemko songs of St. Nicholas Orchester or for years they participated in events of the “Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre” Centre, which were organised to commemorate the Jews of Lublin. Each of them hosted approximately 3,5 people from Ukraine, making a total of 2,500 refugees, for whom there was no need to look for gymnasiums or hangars.

However, linear simplifications should be avoided. For these 17 people might not have been there either without the 100 others who could only afford financial or food donations but who affirmed or at least accepted the actions of those more active. In Poland 70% of the population helped, and by the end of 2022 only 11% were negative about accepting refugees. And yet it could have been as in Slovakia, where this percentage reached 52% and 39% attributed the cause of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the USA (in Poland 3%).

Taking into consideration the level of our political life, it would have been sufficient if on the day before the war broke out there had been any anniversary of Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia and all of right-wing politicians could have hoped for a revival of nationalistic spirit in their electorate. Among the society negative attitudes towards Ukrainian people would have increased, and only that would have been probably enough to cause some of those people who helped or supported refugee women to have a dilemma and react later or less sacrificially. However, it did not happen, because thanks to intercultural animation, also referring to our history, it is not so easy to fuel ethnic animosities in Poland nowadays.

Human and social capital

Human capital and social capital are only two different types of education. First one prepares people for individual professional work and is therefore perceived as a grouping of individuals with specific competences. In the case of aid to Ukraine, this type of capital was also converted into private resources such as housing, means of transport, money, free time and various aspects of individual capability to commit to aid.

Social capital is also a type of individual education, however it prepares us for cooperation in a social space, where there are no specific offices or duties. The effectiveness of social capital consists in connecting people with diverse competences and specialties or even culturally different ways of thinking, according to their needs. Such connections result in innovations, added value and the impossible becomes possible. In the case of aid to Ukraine, this type of capital was mainly converted into the capability of society to use dispersed private resources in a directional manner.

Intercultural animation opens the social space for people who come from areas beyond our social, administrative or ethnic borders. Therefore, we can behave as “normal” not only towards our people and when it is easy, but also when it is difficult and towards strangers. Usually it is done for us by the human capital working within the public administrative structure and resources, which it commands on our behalf. But sometimes, as in 2022, we mobilise social capital to use our own resources to personally help strangers in need.

If this is the case, we should be always aware that it is not the rule, but the result of many years of pedagogical work and existence of community of leaders dedicated to socio-cultural animation, who not only have ease of altruistic behaviours for common good, but also they are able to professionally organise the society in this purpose. I encourage you to get familiarised with this topic by reading the texts and scholarship work listed below.

The most important thing is that social capital, although not subject to educational standardisation like human capital, is a part of pedagogy and, as a type of education, can be specialised and subsidised through social policy. This opens up the possibility to consider socio-cultural, and in particular, and intercultural animation as a condition for the social preparation of the Polish nation for the challenges of the present. It is worth to remember this at a time of the development of such techniques of mass influence on audiences, which make it easier to destroy their capacity for cooperation than to build it. Somehow we must methodically oppose these destructive forces.

All texts of the author in English and German, supplementing the content of the report Intercultural animation and crisis-resilience on the example of Lublin 1989-2022⁵ (in Polish):
Articles published abroad:

• Von Mensch zu Mensch⁶, „Zeichen”, nr 2 / autumn 2022, periodical of Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdiens e. V.

• How could we not help⁷, „Common Ground”, summer 2023, periodical of European Cultural Foundation, p. 102.

Translations:

• Success story: narratives of Lublin assistance to refugees from Ukraine⁸, „Kultura Enter”, 2023/24 nr 107-108

• How Lublin’s social capital paid a dividend to refugees from Ukraine⁹, „Kultura Enter”, 2023/24 nr 107-108

• Noble impulse of logistics¹⁰, „Kultura Enter”, 2023/24 nr 107-108

Translation: Zuzanna Wujek
Contact to the author: marcin@tnn.lublin.pl

 

Translation realised as part of student internship (90 hours, October – February 2022-23) in the second year of Applied Linguistics (Faculty of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, UMCS) at the “Grodzka Gate – NN Theater Center” under the direction of Marcin Skrzypek.