The catalyst for this article was an virtual meeting with Izabela Duchnowska, the initiator of a community fridge which she put in front of her artistic hostel in Wrocław’s Nadodrze over two years ago.
Continue readingCategory People
Bom Bia! – Would you like to try homemade requeijão? – an interview with Bia Freitas
It was our first meeting after lock down, Bia, my Brazilian friend who lives in Galway, gave me a small container with a smiled emoji on it and words: Feito com amizade / Made with friendship. Inside was a white, delicate requeijão reminiscent of creamy cottage cheese or ricotta. But for me, this taste was totally new.
Continue readingThe road to social change – an interview with Agnieszka Bułacik
It is easy to say that someone is racist, but WHO AM I?
An interview with Agnieszka Bułacik, a co-founder of the new visions educational collective, made me realize how much routine thinking is still inside me. Although we often seem not to perceive the problem as ours, the first step to change is to own up: Yes, sometimes I think schematically.
Continue readingCosmos of Ciara Beckers
I am not looking for, I use what I have around me. When I see something then my ideas born, but also everything starts from myself.
Ciara Beckers is a young artist and in my opinion artist – pioneer because she explores the thing which nobody seems to notice. Her art is very simple but also a bit of surrealistic. I met Ciara last year at the Tiny Traders Village market. While we met again for an interview, I thought that she has something similar to Salvador Dali who was fascinated with revealing deepest ego.
Continue readingWoodstock, New York, illustrations – an interview with artist Sharon Watts
On an evening in June 2020, Sharon Watts’s illustrations take me to an America the 60s & 70s which emanated with the big changes. Dreams pour out from the stories of a reluctant hippie chick. Did Sharon meet Bob Dylan at Cafe Reggio on MacDougal Street in New York? – I wonder.
Continue readingPeople who change the world in Galway
So here’s an idea for a more useful game. Next time you go for a walk, pick a bag and fill it with trash, post a picture of it and nominate other friends to do so. We all have gloves and masks, you’ll be isolated so no excuses, but please respect the quarantine restrictions. Please feel free to participate without being nominated
-so wrote Enrico Bagnoli on his Facebook profile and he has motivated others to clean up their nearest areas. He went for a walk and took a large bag full of plastic rubbish and fishing waste on the edge of the ocean.
Continue readingWhat does coffee mean to you?
–Hey Barista
– some people call me at work, and I value this nickname because I like to make coffee and drink it.
Recently, one customer told me that he likes coffee made exactly by me. Then I realized that the fact how I care about making each coffee makes sense.
Continue reading“Life is beautiful because of the people we meet”
Have you ever had the situation that hostile weather thwarted your plans, just like a storm stopped the opening ceremony of the European Capital of Culture at 8 th February 2020, in Galway, Ireland and overturned the plans of 50,000 enthusiasts?
Nothing replaces the performance prepared by the Wonder Works class-world company. However, even a pressing storm can not stop what was born between people in the rainy city.
Continue readingAfrican sun in Ireland
– These are not just colourful fabrics, this is my identity, the country I come from, the taste of my childhood.
-so Virtue Shine told me, a fashion designer from Ghana who now sews brightly colored clothes in Galway.
January in Ireland over the wild Atlantic is a burden. Heavy rain, gales, hail, grey colour skies. Meanwhile I enter Virtue’s studio and there I can see hundreds of special fabrics around, each with different patterns and colours. On the hangers are dresses, skirts, jackets, scarves, bags and birds.
– Working with colours here in Galway, where the sky is clouded so often is a great privilege, because the colour is a mood lifter and can preset my day
– says Virtue.
Continue readingMake love no waste
I meet Aurélie Vargas in one of the Galway cafes. We sit at the table and she gave me the fabric flower sac where I find: oval face soap, teddy bear shampoo and square body soap with stamped inscription: 100% hand made.
All of them made from natural ingredients, look beautiful in simple colours. I couldn’t imagine before how shampoo can be solid without plastic bottle.
I put them on the table next to our coffees, and Aurélie takes me into the world of her natural cosmetics. She explores it from four years, and she has been making them by herself two years already.
Continue reading