The Polish edition of The Big Green retreat confirmed that conversations about sustainability in culture become most tangible when they move beyond the conference room and are rooted in a specific place, landscape and local community. Instead of organising another intensive event concentrated in a single centre, we proposed “Retrat” — a decentralised programme spread across small towns and villages in Lower Silesia, bringing together contemporary art, craft, ecology, education and local heritage. An important part of this concept was the pace of the retreat itself: participation in individual activities was not compulsory, and the programme allowed time for rest, conversation and independent engagement with the places we visited.

One of the most important conclusions for us was that the environmental responsibility of cultural institutions should not be reduced solely to limiting the ecological footprint of cultural production. Equally important is the way a programme is built: its scale and rhythm, relationships with local hosts, the use of existing resources, and the recognition of local knowledge as equal in value to expert or artistic knowledge. In this sense, Lower Silesia was not simply the backdrop for the event, but one of its co-authors.

Throughout the week, we met people representing very different fields of knowledge and practice. From Art Transparent’s perspective, particularly important were conversations with the international partners of The Big Green, as well as with Philipp P. Thapa, Borut Jerman from PiNA, Christina Jaritsch from OtoGen, Simana Markovska from Interpret Europe, Monika Cychowska from the Kaczawskie Association, and Christina Toma from the University of Bucharest. The programme created conditions not only for presenting different working methods, but above all for testing them together — from intercultural communication and heritage interpretation to designing activities related to sustainable development.

Equally important were our encounters with local artists, craftspeople, educators and residents. A visit to sculptor Piotr Makała’s house and studio in Gaj, the ceramics studio of Mars Erdmann, family-run workshops in Dobków, and activities at Gorzanów Palace demonstrated that practical knowledge, craftsmanship and everyday engagement with materials can be just as important a point of reference for contemporary culture as institutional models of artistic production.

Some of the most memorable experiences of the retreat were the field-based activities. “Architecture of the Flood” in Bardo offered a way of looking at the river and landscape through the lens of hydrological change and human intervention; the trip to the Land of Extinct Volcanoes connected geology with heritage interpretation; while Anna Siekierska’s performative walk through the peat bog near Zieleniec activated not only knowledge, but also the senses, imagination and an embodied experience of the landscape. Another important moment was her walk “In Search of Water” in Gorzanów park, which referred to the historical water system and to the present-day absence of water in places whose character it once helped shape.

The retreat was also a space for bringing together artists and participants in The Big Green project from different countries. It opened with a presentation of work by Portuguese artist José Jesus, joined by Miguel Neto and Maia Stefana Oprea. The following days combined project work with public events addressed to local audiences. The finale deliberately took on an informal form: a communal dinner and an intergenerational dance evening at Gorzanów Palace replaced a conventional “conference closing” with a situation centred on building relationships through shared food, movement and local tradition.

From Art Transparent’s perspective, this experience may contribute to further developing models of working outside major urban centres and to integrating environmental, craft-based and local knowledge even more strongly into artistic projects. The retreat also demonstrated the importance of international cooperation that does not consist solely in exchanging finished projects, but in spending time together, getting to know places, and building a shared language that makes it possible to work across institutional and cultural differences. For Art Transparent, this is an important direction for thinking about future residencies and activities in public space: less as isolated events, and more as long-term processes rooted in relationships, place and environmental responsibility.