Third Culture Kids

This interdisciplinary project is intended for both children and adults. Its starting point is the concept of the “third culture”—the experience of growing up between more than one cultural world. The project develops this concept into a broader perspective through which to explore the identity, belonging, and participation of children in the Polish diaspora and multicultural families.

Contemporary experiences of migration fit less and less neatly into a simple division between the culture of one’s country of origin and that of one’s country of residence. International mobility, multicultural families, multilingualism, and successive generations raised outside their parents’ country of origin mean that identity can be multidimensional, individual, and continually shaped by a child’s experiences.

Living between several worlds, children can draw from their parents’ cultures, the country in which they are growing up, their languages, schools, communities, and personal experiences. They are not merely carriers of identities inherited from previous generations. They have the right to give their inherited heritage their own meaning and to create individual ways of belonging.

For this reason, the project does not ask only how to pass Polish culture on to children, but also: how can we create a space in which they can build their own relationship with Polish heritage without having to give up other parts of their identity?

This question takes us further—from identity to belonging and participation. We are interested in how children and future generations can not only learn about Polish culture, but also help shape its contemporary, transnational forms and find their own place within the communities to which they belong.

The project uses art, theatre, conversation, and educational activities as spaces for encounters between generations and cultures. It does not offer a single definition of Polish identity or a single answer to questions of identity. Instead, it creates a space in which to ask new questions about what heritage, belonging, and participation can mean today in a world of mobility and multiculturalism.

The project:

• strengthens intergenerational bonds without assuming that future generations must replicate their parents’ identities;
• supports intercultural understanding and the acceptance of multidimensional belonging;
• creates space for children and families with mixed cultural heritage;
• encourages future generations to participate actively in and help shape their communities;
• uses art and theatre as tools for dialogue between cultures and generations;
• highlights the transnational character of contemporary Polish culture.

Project concept and development: Justyna Kania

Produced in collaboration with Luminaris Art