”Progress and the Seasons in the Park. Adaptation”. A program of public events for 2026 in Lesław Węgrzynowski Park

“Progress and the Seasons in the Park. Adaptation,” the third edition of BWA Wrocław’s public program, is once again unfolding in Lesław Węgrzynowski Park, in the neighborhood of our future main building. We have made ourselves at home here—by which we mean, we have adapted to the conditions of the area. Looking for ways to put down roots, we search alongside our audience for historical, social, and ecological connections. For possibilities of blending into a space and creating together. Of simply being together.  

We are therefore exploring the theme of adaptation, not only as a process by which human and non-human organisms adjust to the conditions of the contemporary, multi-crisis world, but also as an active and generative response, its expression visible in everyday life, in architecture, and in art. We follow the network of human–environment relationships entangled in the all-consuming calculus of capitalism: progressive growth. Reckoning with the full cost of “progress,” we seek low-emission solutions that are equitable for all. We seek to “socialize the Anthropocene,” drawing on Ewa Bińczyk and the title of her eponymous book. To find solutions that serve not to accelerate productivity, but to strengthen networks of mutual support. Instead of cranking up the air conditioner on sweltering summer days, we propose an afternoon nap in the shade. 

Exploring these proposals, we open ourselves to practices and activities rooted in multiple senses. We are guided by smell, touch, hearing, and taste. The senses connect us to embodied feeling—to a sphere of knowledge beyond the intellectual. They lead us into the realm of sensation, experience, and memory, inscribed in the body as the non-verbal spectrum of what we know. In these investigations, we also draw upon metis: felt, experiential knowledge. 

Through a range of activities, we observe the neighborhood within the broader context of a convulsing world. We aim to transcend established patterns, pursuing new forms of togetherness. In the company of Illia Meier and Anna Oleszkiewicz, we’ll take a scent walk through the park, mapping its aromas, composing an alternative olfactory guide. At a family event with Monika Łojba, we’ll design a home using every sense but sight. Come summer, Michalina Kostecka and Anna Kwapisz will join us to savor flavors and methods for preserving food. Alongside naturalists Małgorzata and Marian Piszczek, we’ll research and observe our way toward a biography of the park’s plants. And we’ll turn our artistic attention to a single poplar tree—its survival, and the sculpted support we can build to help it.

We’ll also gather for panel discussions on social histories and architecture. Agata Gabiś and Joanna Mielewczyk will open a conversation about progressive visions for the multi-functional apartment. Because making oneself at home is a continuous negotiation of boundaries—in architecture and everyday life—a subsequent panel will take up the question of what belongs to us privately and what collective strategies we take part in beyond our front door.

Together with composer and naturalist Agata Zemla, we’ll listen closely to the sonic life of the neighborhood, reflect on its role, and layer in a musical intervention of our own. And with Marta Konieczna and Daniela Puła, we’ll put an ear to the question of sound ecology: the acoustic needs of everyone in the neighborhood, human and non-human alike. 

Each Tuesday from June to September, we also invite you for a series of open-air drawing sessions and reading groups. One week you can come to draw, the next to listen and read.

At the close of the season, in collaboration with the Texpol collective, we’ll prepare a soft den: a space for spinning stories about weaving, materials, embroidery, and handcrafting.