Outdoor Workshop: We're back for another season of walks

During the walk, we will meet women who, despite living in a world of universities almost entirely dominated by men, decided to enter this environment head-on and dedicate themselves to medicine, natural sciences, and the exact sciences. This was met with considerable resistance from some lecturers, who even spoke of an unacceptable decline in the level and dignity of higher education institutions. This was also experienced by women scientists associated with Wrocław's higher education students at various times. Some lived in Breslau, others in Lviv. Wrocław, and particularly the academic area around Grunwaldzki Square, incorporated them into a shared history. They earned their academic degrees here and co-founded Wrocław's legendary research schools. Among them were women doctors, chemists, veterinarians, botanists, anthropologists, and others. Some were well-known, others completely forgotten. Their biographies will be explored against the backdrop of the constraints and social circumstances that faced female students before and after the war.

We'll be traveling primarily on sidewalks. Obstacles may include uneven surfaces and parked cars. There will also be a few steps, but they are also accessible by ramps.

Among the professions that longest resisted women's participation was architecture. For centuries, women were considered unsuitable for this profession. It was argued that architecture, which required precise calculations, was inappropriate for women, whose anatomical and psychological characteristics would supposedly prevent them from studying the field. Even after women were allowed to study architecture, few managed to find work in the profession. The situation changed dramatically after 1945. The then-generation of female architects proved that all previously prevailing beliefs about women in architecture were nonsense. And they demonstrated this with outstanding projects that are now Wrocław's calling card and attract researchers of post-war architecture from around the world. During the walk, we will learn the biographies and backgrounds of, among others, Jadwiga Grabowska-Hawrylak, Anna Tarnowska, Maria Molicka, Krystyna Barska, and Ewa Kazimierowska-Cieszyńska. But above all, we will see their achievements – the magnificent buildings located in the Plac Grunwaldzki estate.

We will be traveling primarily on sidewalks. Obstacles may include uneven surfaces and improperly parked cars.

May is European Diversity Month, a time when we remind everyone that social diversity, equal rights, and tolerance are the guarantees of a properly functioning society. Throughout history, including Wrocław's, there are many people and events that remind us of these principles and warn against breaking them. To relive these moments, join us on an equality walk through the Plac Grunwaldzki neighborhood. Here, as if through a historical lens, you can discover the stories of women's emancipation, the first activists fighting for the rights of non-heteronormative people, and the Jewish doctors who treated everyone without exception. But it is also here that the history of racial laws and the Holocaust unfolded. It was here that those who opposed Article 175, which criminalized non-heteronormative men, and the bench ghetto lived and worked. But the history of this neighborhood also includes figures who supported the ban on women, and later on, Jews, from Polish universities. In celebration of European Diversity Month, we'll be recalling the stories of both. The former for inspiration, the latter as a cautionary tale.

We will be traveling primarily on sidewalks. Obstacles may include uneven surfaces and improperly parked cars.