The weave of cultural production, education, and training in the work of the Borderland organisation (Pogranicze organizacja)

The Borderland organisation is based in rural north-eastern Poland, some five hours' drive from Warsaw. The organisation's mission is to harness the arts as a medium that addresses issues of cultural, national, and ethnic difference. It promotes multi-cultural education and understanding through a variety of proposals, including theatre, oral history collection, filmmaking, publishing, and conflict resolution strategies developed in response to the ethno-national animosity still very much alive in the contested region of Poland where it is located. The organisation's strategies have proven so successful that, with the support of organisations such as the EU and Ford Foundation, they have been exported to places such as the Caucuses, Bosnia and Aceh, Indonesia. Focusing on the Borderland's theatre work and its publishing division, the article explores how the organisation exploits the slippage that blurs the binary between education and training in order to achieve its goal of humanising the other. In doing so, it teases apart the differences between the two as well as draws upon the notion of experiential education championed by the educational researcher and theorist, David Kolb.