• Summer school programme (*.pdf file)
• Participant list
• Participant diary
• Summer school gallery

Welcome to Gniezno!

This was my first summer school (and I hope not my last!), but one of a long line of fantastic teaching, learning and developing opportunities which have been run by a dedicated team over the past few years (see previous issues). The fifth in a series of Polish summer schools (see our Food, Heritage and The Countryside editions) this was the second to have gained Hornby sponsorship.

Participants from a variety of countries - Poland, Brazil, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Croatia and Slovenia – gathered together for two weeks in early August to study and discuss the theme of Culture and produce (as is customary in these summer schools) a set of web-based resources around the theme.

At the delightful and extremely welcoming European College in Gniezno we had all the facilities we could have hoped for, and an extremely friendly and helpful staff. The catering, which was excellent every day, kept us fired up and ready to work each day, and the welcome relaxation of the town itself, with its beautiful churches and tree-lined lake helped to keep the stress levels down as the workload increased…

Taking our cue from previous years’ courses, we engaged in a full and very stimulating timetable of training sessions, activities, excursions – all leading up to the second week of the course, when the participants got down to the difficult task of preparing the website materials.

During the first week we all had a good opportunity to get to grips with the subject itself, with interesting sessions on Culture, Stereotypes, Humour in Cultures, Cultures in the Media and much more - and the chance to find out a little bit about Polish history and culture with several enjoyable and educational visits.

And at the end of this week, the participants divided into groups to start planning, preparing and developing the rich set of resources you will find on these pages.

We hope you will enjoy and use these resources as much as we all enjoyed working together to produce them, and would welcome your feedback on anything you find on this site.

Finally, thanks are due from me to the wonderful team I had the great pleasure and privilege to work with:

Anna Tomczak, Małgorzata Zdybiewska and Simon Pounder for their tutoring skills (and Małgorzata for being the extremely capable on-site problem solver and organiser.)

It only remains for me to also thank all the staff at the College, and – of course – all the participants, without whose hard work, dedication and enthusiasm, this set of resources would not exist.

I sincerely hope to return to Poland for another Summer School in the near future, and would recommend the experience to anyone. Now, enough words – please enjoy your visit to this site, and we hope you benefit from all the hard work which has gone into its creation.

Gavin Dudeney
DoS, Hornby Summer School
Gniezno, August 2004