The Strength Of Networking: From Local Encounters To International Impact

By Alicja Morawska-Rubczak
(Art Fraction Foundation, SPARSE Plus)

This text was born from a desire to reflect on how meaningful international cooperation can strengthen local cultural ecosystems, increase visibility, and create lasting value for communities that are often overlooked.

At Art Fraction Foundation, a small foundation based in Poznań, we have long believed that size is not a limitation. In fact, what is smallest often matters most. At the very center of our work are the youngest audiences-babies, toddlers, and the adults who accompany them. We are committed to promoting, creating, and supporting art for very young children because we believe that unrestricted access to culture is a fundamental right of every child.

This belief aligns with the World Health Organization understanding that safe spaces for creativity and play are essential to children’s healthy development and to strengthening the bonds between children and their caregivers. In a world increasingly dominated by screens and overstimulation, these encounters become even more important. As highlighted in The Guardian article “One of the greatest invisible tragedies”: is the loss of childhood imagination inevitable?, the erosion of imagination may be one of the most serious and least visible losses facing young children today. Theatre and live artistic experiences offer an antidote: they nurture curiosity, empathy, concentration, and the capacity to wonder.

Networks That Create Real Change

One of the most transformative moments in our development was joining the Small Size Network, an international community dedicated to artistic dialogue with children from birth to six years old. One of ASSITEJ International professional networks, it connects artists, researchers, and cultural practitioners from across the world.

Through this community, Paweł Gałkowski, head of Art Fraction Foundation, became one of the researchers involved in the project Children as Agents in Early Years Theatre Practice, one of the research strands of ASSITEJ International’s Building Collective Resilience initiative. This international engagement has directly enriched our local work, helping us develop new tools, broaden our competencies, and better serve families and communities across Poland.

Networking, when rooted in trust and shared values, is not an abstract concept. It is a practical and powerful mechanism for mutual support. It enables ideas to travel, relationships to deepen, and local initiatives to grow beyond what would otherwise be possible.

From Cities to Villages

Our work with families in large cities naturally led us to ask how art could reach children living in smaller towns and rural areas. This question gave rise to our first travelling festival for the youngest audiences. For more than ten years, we have deliberately left the main cultural routes to meet children and families in villages and small towns throughout Poland.

One of these places is Zbąszyń, where our long-standing collaboration with Zbąszyń Public Library has become a model of how relationships can transform local cultural life.

Magdalena Rożek recalls that when she first met our team in 2015, neither of us knew how significant this cooperation would become. Together, we developed programming for children aged 0–3 and their families, attracting new audiences and helping parents recognize the value of thoughtfully prepared theatre experiences. Over time, this annual event became one of the most anticipated moments in the library’s calendar.

What began as a modest collaboration evolved into a lasting partnership and a source of inspiration for others. Magdalena is now one of the local leaders we hope will mentor peers in rural communities throughout Poland.

SPARSE Plus: Networking in Action

The SPARSE Plus project has given this work an international dimension. Through SPARSE Plus, we are building relationships with cultural organizers and community leaders from smaller towns and rural areas across Europe. These exchanges allow us to share experience, test new approaches, and strengthen local cultural ecosystems.

The value of this process became especially visible during the first European Network Meeting within the LOKAL – Programme for Culture and Engagement, held in Świdnica. As part of the programme, Alicja Morawska-Rubczak led a workshop entitled Culture on the Move. How Networks and Local Initiatives Strengthen Cultural Life Beyond Major Cities.

The session brought together cultural practitioners, organizers, and community leaders from across Europe to reflect on how vibrant cultural life can be developed in places that large institutions rarely reach. Drawing on the experiences of the SPARSE Plus project and other international collaborations, the workshop explored how networks can support cultural initiatives in rural and peripheral areas, strengthen the agency of audiences and local communities, and foster locally mobile artistic formats. At the same time, it provided an important opportunity to showcase SPARSE Plus’s achievements and to build new relationships with professionals working in smaller towns and villages throughout Europe.

This is the quiet but profound strength of networking: it creates spaces where people meet, exchange experiences, and discover that they are part of a wider community of practice. Ideas turn into collaborations, collaborations evolve into long-term partnerships, and those partnerships become the foundation for meaningful and lasting cultural change.

 

Relationships That Open New Doors

The importance of networking is perhaps best illustrated by how we joined SPARSE Plus itself. Members of the Small Size Network recommended Art Fraction Foundation to Ralph Lister from Take Art, who later became our mentor in the project.

This chain of trust-one relationship leading to another demonstrates that the most valuable outcomes of networking are often impossible to predict. Recommendations arise from credibility. Partnerships emerge from shared experience. New opportunities grow from genuine human connection.

What Comes Next: BLOOOM in Poland

The impact of these relationships will be clearly visible in June and July 2026, when the acclaimed performance BLOOOM returns to Poland.

Created by Teatro4Garoupas and performed by Eugênia Labuhn, BLOOOM is a poetic and deeply engaging performance for very young children and their caregivers. Though created for early years audiences, its message resonates equally with adults, offering multiple layers of interpretation and emotional connection.

Between 14 June and 5 July 2026, BLOOOM will be presented 12 times across Poland. Five performances will take place as part of SPARSE Plus Touring #3, reaching audiences in smaller towns such as Zbąszyń, Kotlin, Lubno, and Jeżewice. At the same time, thanks to partnerships developed through SPARSE Plus and other networks, the tour will expand significantly.

The production will return to the Regional Children’s Hospital in Bydgoszcz, bringing theatre to children in a particularly sensitive and meaningful setting. BLOOOM will also be featured at the Early Years Festival, organized by Art Fraction Foundation in Poznań. This year’s edition of the festival carries special significance, as it coincides with celebrations marking 20 years of early years theatre in Poland. The presence of BLOOOM within this context connects local audiences, international artists, and sector professionals in a shared reflection on the past and future of theatre for the very youngest.

Networking as a Practice of Care

The BLOOOM tour is more than a series of performances. It includes meetings with local communities, exchanges with professionals, and opportunities for reflection. It demonstrates how international cooperation can support inclusive, sustainable touring and strengthen long-term relationships.

The schedule has been designed with care, allowing time for rest and regeneration between performances. This sustainable approach protects artists’ wellbeing while ensuring consistently high artistic quality.

The Invisible Infrastructure

Networking is often invisible. It takes place in conversations over coffee, during workshops, through recommendations, and in the trust that develops over years of collaboration. Yet it is this invisible infrastructure that makes visible achievements possible.

Because of networking, a small foundation from Poznań can contribute to global research, influence European cultural policy discussions, and bring world-class performances to children in villages, libraries, hospitals, and festivals across Poland.

Because of networking, local cultural organizers gain confidence, inspiration, and practical tools.

Because of networking, children – wherever they live – can experience theatre that sparks imagination, strengthens relationships, and reminds us that art belongs to everyone.

Networking also provides the ideal environment for building more sustainable touring models. Strong partnerships make it possible to design routes more thoughtfully, optimize schedules, and balance performances with meaningful complementary activities such as workshops, discussions, and community encounters. Instead of moving hastily from one venue to the next, artists and organizers can create space for rest, reflection, and the unplanned moments that often lead to the most valuable exchanges. In this way, touring becomes not only more environmentally and socially responsible, but also more deeply connected to the communities it reaches.

And perhaps this is the most important lesson of all: when relationships are built with care, generosity, and shared purpose, they become a force capable of transforming both local communities and international cultural practice.