Call me Жінка, Kvinde, Donna, Isza… Żeńszczyzna (Femininity) – Women’s heritage. In search of a sociocultural gene is an initiative we created to give voice to the heroines of everyday life. We aim to draw attention to female characters in history and culture: Polish women, Jewish, Ukrainian and of other national minorities, living and working in the area of the Myślenice region (a small county in southern Poland) during the occupation, after the War and today. Ordinary inhabitants in extraordinary circumstances and extraordinary women in ordinary situations inspired the series, the background of which are monuments testifying to the multiculturalism of Poland (Małopolska), including, among others, the wooden synagogue in Wiśniowa - a building from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, unique in the country, registered as a Cultural Property in 1993.

Among the residents of the region of Polish, Ukrainian or Jewish origin, as well as among those who have emigrated and live all over Europe and the world, we will search for the stories of their local female ancestors: activists, community workers, members of organisations and creative, resourceful and active women. We will collect archival records of entrepreneurial aunts, talented cousins and creative neighbours. Starting with ourselves, the representatives of the Foundation, we will be the first to write down the stories of our mothers, grandmothers and great, great, great...grandmothers, in order to inspire others. Thanks to the groundwork, we already know that they came from various parts of historical Europe: Austria-Hungary, Romania, Italy. We want to show the locals how diverse we are, how many parts of the world make up our little corner of Southern Poland, and that together we can treasure this heritage. The starting point will be the HERstories - we will gather and recognise the achievements of little-known or forgotten activists and creators.

Lady, maiden, girl, woman - in one word: żeńszczyzna. Polish “żeńszczyzna”, a rough equivalent to English “femininity”, is one of the earliest terms for women common to all Slavic languages. Its meaning encompassed a broadly understood "female issue": from sex and female characteristics, through family and social roles, to emotions, values or associations connected with the sphere of femininity. It is therefore not difficult to guess what this old Polish word is about, but not so easy to discover what secrets it holds.

Finding the hidden tales of Woman, Жінка, Kvinde, Donna, Isha is like a journey one step at a time: starting from legends heard in childhood to the complete reconstruction of a forgotten story - the HERstory.

The aim of the project is to show the empowerment of women of different ethnic and religious backgrounds in the local history of the Myślenice area.  Its concept was born in response to the lack of recognition of women's achievements to the same extent as the merits of their male counterparts. The public space, literature, historical records and other archives are dominated by stories of men: courageous, sacrificing their lives at the battlefront, protecting their loved ones, building a new world from the rubble.  But in their shadows are hundreds and thousands of women: grandmothers, mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, aunts and cousins. They were the ones who performed heroic deeds of survival in the reality of war, they were the ones who single-handedly kept whole families alive, protected the oppressed, they were also the ones who fought the occupiers and rebuilt the world. However, their stories are forgotten, they remain in the shadows just like their heroines. The reason for this is the peculiarity of the sources created at the time mainly by men, and the conviction that the subject of interest should be the life led by men at the time. Meanwhile, for this life to exist at all, it was women who performed the social roles necessary for it to function: Polish craftswomen, female farmers, housewives and administrators, as well as Jewish tradeswomen, innkeepers and bakers were involved in the most important economic sectors that enabled local communities to survive. They were the ones who healed, supported, rescued loved ones and not just the forgotten midwives, herbalists, teachers. These seemingly mundane achievements of women have not been, and still are not, sufficiently conversed about in the public discussion of the occupation times compared to the level of recognition of the merits of men. With our project we want to be part of the process of balancing this out.

We aim to bring female-led stories to as large an audience as possible. To achieve this, we are actively looking for partnerships and new collaborative opportunities through which we expand our network and reach. By doing so, we seek to develop a space for dialogue, on a par with the many other activities we run. We share the Foundation's values of promoting tolerance towards people of other religions or backgrounds.

Our initiative will take the form of an archive and documentation project. In order to accomplish the set tasks, we will organise a series of meetings with local residents: members of rural women associations (KGW), representatives of NGOs (including women from the Ukrainian and other minorities living in the district of Myślenice), we will invite living witnesses of the events that took place in the region, including the area around the Wiśniowa synagogue. It was in the synagogue that the families of Wiśniowa's Jews met, prayed and debated key decisions, including their escape from Wiśniowa during the Second World War. This wooden building from the early 20th century was saved from demolition and revitalised thanks to the efforts of the ARTS Foundation, among others. Most importantly, descendants of Wiśniowa's Jews will also be contacted.

●       We will organise a series of meetings (3), interviews (3), interactions with the community of the Myslenice district (Poles, Ukrainians and other representatives of national minorities); We will collect souvenir/archival items, photographs, we will record oral stories in audio and/or video format, we will write down stories

●       We will organise a series of interviews with descendants of Wiśniowa, Dobczyce, Myślenice Jews and Jewish women

●       We will create a historical ethnographic collection of the local history of the region's women in the Open Archiving System (OSA) on the zbioryspołeczne.pl platform, on our website and our own EtnoStoria application available on Google Play and App Store.

●       We will develop an exhibition based on this, organise it under the Wiśniowa synagogue and publish an exhibition catalogue with the collected archival data and stories.

Methodology of our project:

1. Ethnographic interview - the qualitative research method we will use to obtain the stories we are looking for. It will consist of a more or less structured and focused interview with an interviewee (insider), thematic interviews focused around a specific research problem.
2. Oral history - a method of historical documentation used to record the experiences of living participants in the events under investigation. It involves listening to and recording stories based on the personal experiences and opinions of the speaker.
3. Storytelling - the analysis of narratives created by members of a community. In the case of our project, these will be interviews with a particular focus on HERstories from the lives of the interviewees.
4. Digital storytelling - creating stories using digital tools and multimedia. It is an original and interesting way of presentation and promotion, a creative educational and animation tool that we will use to archive heritage in an interesting and accessible way for new generations. Forms: website, virtual exhibition, EtnoStoria application, OSA archiving system.
5. Digital storytelling of heritage - we will realise this through the use of the foundation's original app EtnoStoria. With this tool, local communities will be able to comprehensively collect their archives and memorabilia in one publicly accessible place.
6. OSA run by the Centre of Community Archive and community archives - these are publicly accessible heritage digitisation platforms that we will use to further archive and publicise the collections.

The project is addressed to the descendants of the residents of Myślenice, Wiśniowa and Dobczyce: Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian women who were forced to emigrate from their country; to female leaders, members of rural women associations (KGW), NGO representatives (including women from national minorities who have lived here for a long time). Thanks to many years of working with local groups, we know how rich and diverse the demography of the region is. The inhabitants came from various parts of historical Europe: Austria-Hungary, Romania, Italy. We want to show how diverse we are, how many parts of the world make up our little corner of Southern Poland, and that together we can treasure this heritage. The starting point will be the HERstories - we will gather and recognise the achievements of little-known or forgotten activists and creators.

Thanks to the micro-perspective, which means narrowing down the activities to the region of Myślenice - a municipality in the south of Poland, we can directly identify specific people, show photographs, pass on and preserve precious memories. The detailed fates of (extra)ordinary women will be combined with current (historical) and contemporary events in the country, Europe and the world. We will find and show what the historical connections between different places and events are, connecting local stories with those of a national or European scale. We will not only tell the story of the events of 1918-45 (as far back in memory as possible), but integrate them into larger narratives - combining them with pre-war and post-war stories, so that we can see the wider context of the life of the historical and present-day community of the Myślenice area in a European context.