In our minds, August is inevitably associated with the events, which took place at the Gdańsk Shipyard. With joint effort and determination, the shipyard community wrote #newstories that changed the course of history.
We inaugurated this year’s 43rd anniversary of signing the Gdańsk Agreement with an exhibition of one of the most recognizable shipyard photographers – Stanisław Składanowski. The exhibition titled: ” August 31st, 1980. The day shipyard workers wrote #newstories” included 21 of the most interesting and iconic photos from the “August 80” exhibition, which was created on the initiative of the author of the photos on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the August Agreements in 2020. In his photographs, Stanisław tried to show primarily people – their reactions and various emotional states – from uncertainty, fear, waiting for the next course of events, collective prayer, funny situations, as well as many everyday events that took place during the strikes.
On August 31st, we celebrated together with the inhabitants of Gdańsk, members of our community, and former shipyard employees, who took part in the events of 1980. We dedicated the beginning of the day to the youngest members of our community, inviting them to play arcade and physical games.
The attractions also included the GTW Gedania zone, which encouraged smaller and larger guests to try their hand at rowing.
On that day, we also opened the doors of the Dyrekcja building, inviting our guests to get to know the interior of the revitalized building and take a look at the Shipyard Worker’s Memories Archive, which we have set up in the “Shipyard” conference room. The Shipyard Worker’s Memories Archive is a record of the memories of the Gdańsk Shipyard employees and their families. The impetus for its creation was the work on the documentary “Shipyard Workers. People from the Background” about people of whom no one has ever made a film or written a book before.
In the evening, with a portion of freshly popped popcorn, we watched the documentary “Shipyard Workers. People in the background.” The touched faces of the silent heroes, their families, and our guests confirmed our belief that what we do is important and we are on the right track so that future generations will remember how important this area is for the history of Poland and Eastern Europe.
