MCH | BLANK

Official website for Mark C. Hewitt & Blank Productions

Polska by the Sea
Lewes Live Literature
April 2009


Creative Producer / interview texts: Mark C. Hewitt
Photographs: Lisa Barnard
Technical design & installation: Matt Haycocks / Standard8

Installation of photographic portraits and a collection of accompanying postcards celebrating the Eastbourne Polish community, Eastbourne train station, 2009. Photography by
Lisa Barnard.

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The accompanying postcards combine words taken from interviews with Polish people living and working in Eastbourne with images of domestic ephemera taken at their houses and flats. The collection is still available as
a boxed set of 24 postcards from www.leweslivelit.co.uk.

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"I was born in Poland, now I'm English" | "My generation were the first Polish children to grow up here and most of us fitted in very well. But our parents found it hard. Doctors had to retrain, lawyers couldn't practice law at all unless they retrained, you had generals washing dishes ..."

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"English Bank Holidays are nothing to do with anything. When you have a day off it's just a day off. A day to go shopping. In our country every Bank Holiday is a special celebration day. Sometimes I think of it as a sort of theatre ..." | "I have fond childhood memories of my grandparents. I was was very close to my grandfather and grandmother and they were very important to me. My grandfather died but my grandmother's still in Poland. She's 87 years old."

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Produced by Lewes Live Literature as part of Eastbourne Festival for East Sussex Arts Partnership's Word County programme. For this project we were indebted to Miriam Wilkinson of community network group, Polskie Eastbourne.