BAŁUTY STARE/NOWE

Bałuty is a part of Łódź, which is called a district, although it is not a district, its borders are marked differently by everyone, because at different historical moments they were defined differently.It is called a neglected, tragic and even dangerous area, although at the same time it is the cradle of Łódź, an area colorfully described in literature, which was and remains an inspiration for many artists. In a word, you can always argue about Bałuty, but it is also oneof the most characteristic parts of the city.106 years ago, Bałuty - the largest village in Europe with over 100,000 inhabitants, was incorporated into the large, modern, industrial city of Łódź. Despite the complicated and difficult social and economic situation of this area, the life that went on here has not always been and is - contrary to repeated stereotypes - gray and sad, but often joyful and colorful. Bałuty was written and told, photographed and filmed, mentioned in various languages ​​and latitudes. You can find a lot of materials, photos, articles in newspapers, private and public archives, books. There are also many types of forums and groups on social media. We decided to collect some of these materials as part of our project "BALUTY OLD / NOWE", incl. Reports that describe facts, phenomena, events and the accompanying circumstances, we also included Balucki interviews and memories. We also put here materials that we managed to produce by Centrum Dialogu im. Marek Edelman in Lodz during the project "The City of Bałuty" prepared in 2015 and gathered during the creation of "Bałuckie dictionaries" (2015 and 2017). Our choice is subjective and does not touch upon many aspects and topics related to the changes that took place in Bałuty, even space, we do not enter deeply into the history of this area, we do not discuss mental boundaries, because each balancer has his own place, which he calls Bałuty. We want to show the old and new Baluty not in terms of space or administration, but in terms of personal reflection and memory.STARE BALUTES - for us, these are mainly materials that were created mainly in the 20th century, both before World War II (sometimes earlier), during the war (mainly within the Łódź ghetto), and after the war - until the end of the 20th century. BALUTY NOWE - phenomena observed by us in the 21st century. We want to take a look at how the district has changed at that time and how the people living and / or working here have changed.The "BALUTES STARE / NOWE" project aims to introduce a wider audience to the contemporary appearance of the Baluty "district", the profiles of its inhabitants (mainly artists and journalists) and iconic places through the eyes of people who grew up here or come into contact with Bałuty and baloons. Whom Bałuty delighted and still delight or scared away and want to tell us about it.We hope that the project will develop in the coming years and will interest the contemporary and former inhabitants of Łódź as well as other enthusiasts of Łódź from Poland and the world, because - as one of Tadeusz Gincars interlocutors said in his reportage: all of Poland ".In the future, we plan to expand the project with new texts, reports and films.The journalistic material was obtained thanks to the partners of the project: the Artistic and Literary Quarterly "Arterie", Gazeta Wyborcza, Radio Łódź and TVP 3 Łódź as well as authors of reports.