Report from the second day of the conference

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13.10.2009

The second day of the conference started with the presentations of the museums representatives who had came to Gdansk from Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Russia. The performance of Ieva Gundare from the Latvian Museum of Occupation raised an incredible interest. She presented the problem of propaganda and particularities of growing up in the communistic reality. Her experience and extremely personal examples concerning the Soviet indoctrination made her speech vitally interesting for the young people. The representatives of the Igor Degerby Museum- Berndt Gottberg and Lena Selen whose presentation concerned history of the Porkkala region, life and interdependence of the neighbouring with Russia district, were also granted an unbelievable ovation by the audience.

Building the Museum of the Cold War - the Ice-breaking Cube - was the final and most significant part of the conference. The young people had been invited to contribute to the process before they had arrived to Gdansk. Their work consisting of various documentaries and presentations was aimed to give them the idea on the most characteristic features of the Cold War period in their home countries. In other words, they presented to the others their national perspective for this particular period of time. The second part of the exhibition took a form of various tasks prepared by the Solidarity Centre Foundation. The symbolic curtain split the museum into the Eastern and Western side of Europe. It has also hide the mirror image of the tasks that the participants had to complete. Young people were asked to prepare the monument of happiness in the Eastern and Western side of the Iron Curtain, built the Berlin Wall or design a T-shirt that would represent the freedom of expressons. The way the participants organised the space given proved them to be an amazingly creative group. Therefore, the Cold War exhibition resulted in a documentary part which was enriched by the perception of the youth's vision of that period.

The official opening of the museum by Danuta Kobzdej - a Chairperson of the Solidarity Centre Foundation and Ole Løvig Simonsen – a Chairperson of the Baltic Initiative and Network put the end of the two-days-lasting conference.

We truly believe that participating in the conference has been an educationally important and developing experience. We hope that both plenary sessions and the afternoon programmes during two days of the conference gave an incentive to change the ideas and enabled young people to make new friends that could be the basis for the future initiatives.

Report from the first day of the conference

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