Uto­pia Home is going up in the back­yard of the theatre, near the “Wschód” Inter­school Sports Centre. It will occupy the unused wing of former Elec­tric­al School Com­plex No. 2 in Cra­cow, which was aban­doned due to a drop in the birth rate. The theatre took over care of this space in 2014, and it soon became the ven­ue for altern­at­ive art pro­jects under­taken by Łaźnia. In recent years, it housed, for example “School of Uto­pia”, an art install­a­tion by Marek Chlanda and Mar­cin Chlanda, and served as the stage for “The Last Anim­als”, a per­form­ance dir­ec­ted by Mag­da Szpecht. The recon­struc­tion and refur­bish­ment of the build­ing star­ted in 2019 and are still under way.

Uto­pia Home will have stu­di­os devoted to crafts and vari­ous artist­ic tech­niques with top qual­ity equip­ment. It will also have exhib­i­tion space, meet­ing rooms, facil­it­ies for artists in res­id­ence and a range of energy-sav­ing solu­tions to make the build­ing more func­tion­al. The refur­bished build­ing will give Łaźnia Nowa Theatre an extra 2200 square metres. The recon­struc­tion will emphas­ise the main advant­ages of the former school build­ing. Mod­ern mater­i­als will refer to the indus­tri­al his­tory of this place and the nearby com­bined plants.

Uto­pia Home will be open and friendly to every­one, but sim­il­arly to Łaźnia Nowa, it will focus on pro­mot­ing the con­nec­tion between artists rep­res­ent­ing vari­ous fields of art and the res­id­ents of Nowa Huta. We will offer activ­it­ies for youth and stu­dents, seni­ors, people inter­ested in arts and crafts, and those look­ing for new exper­i­ences and cog­nit­ive stim­uli. The pro­gramme of Uto­pia Home will foster integ­ra­tion between people from dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sion­al and social back­grounds, both able-bod­ied and with dis­ab­il­it­ies. We will ensure inter­na­tion­al cir­cu­la­tion of ideas by invit­ing for­eign artists to coöper­ate with us.

Uto­pi­an think­ing is a strong stim­u­lus for devel­op­ment, so we are going to take good care of it at Uto­pia Home. Our pro­gramme will include pro­jects developed in dia­logue with the urb­an space of Nowa Huta, in a spir­it of com­munity and empathy and in coöper­a­tion between res­id­ents and cre­at­ors who will write the his­tory of this new place togeth­er. We are also plan­ning loc­al debates, social uni­ver­sity courses, and cre­at­ive work­shops which will help par­ti­cipants deep­en the bond between every­day life and art. We will offer a range of edu­ca­tion­al and cul­tur­al activ­it­ies going bey­ond the frame­work of social inter­ac­tions that we are used to. It means many innov­at­ive solu­tions and cre­at­ive relationships.