This was the fourth year of the Solidarity of Arts Festival, and I was excited to be in Poland at the right time. The festival is organised by the City of Gdańsk, the Polish Film Institute, the European Solidarity Centre, the Polish Baltic Phiharmonic, and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The festival aims to bring together world-class artists with the spirit of solidarity and freedom. The festival takes its name from the Solidarity movement which began in Gdańsk in the shipping yards not far from the Polish Baltic Philharmonic. Solidarity started during the Communist era in Poland in 1980 as a non-governmental trade union, but it quickly spread into a more general anti-communist movement, and is said to have contributed to the fall of communism in Poland in 1989.
